I was reading the game manual and noticed rule S2:
I have never seen this rule broken. Has anyone seen it broken?
i haven’t, but when hanging it is possible for a robot to fall of the hanging bar and out of the field …
It is a very difficult rule to break accidentally. The point is so that people don’t design robots which can leave the field and drive around the outside of it.
If a robot can climb over the rail in gateway I bet they could have climbed the wall with some more work.
I remember mention of an FTC tournament in which a 20 foot tall scissor lift robot fell over onto the adjacent field during a match on that 2nd field, but even then it did not completely leave its own field.
I don’t think S2 has ever been broken because it would require effort to do that and there is absolutely no good reason to try it.
The bot from this thread could probably climb over the wall…
https://vexforum.com/t/gateway-speed-bump-drive-trains/24982/1&page=2
Yes there were a few issues in Bowled Over with rather high scissor lifts. At the FTC World Championship teams and volunteers we specifically instructed to not attempt to catch a falling robot and just get out of the way. The robot would be disabled of course but in most cases these incidents occurred near the end of a match anyway.
Rules like S2 are all about safety so don’t read “completely out-of-bounds” to mean the whole robot jumping the fence and running wild. The grey area IMO would be a robot falling backwards and the lift mechanism sticking half way out of the field since it would more than likely be an unintended consequence of falling over. There is a footnote in S2 stating inadvertent perimeter crosses during game play shouldn’t be considered violations so unless effort is made to deliberately violate it (unwise and possibly even an S1 violation) this could only ever be invoked where safety is of concern and that’s going to be a referee call at the time.
There was no out-of-bounds rule in Bowled Over but it was probably covered by:
[FTC Bowled Over]<G16> Egregious robot or team member behavior at the playing field, as determined by the referees, will result in a Major Penalty and possible disqualification. Subsequent violations will result in team disqualification. Egregious behavior includes, but is not limited to, repeated and/or flagrant violation of game rules, uncivil behavior towards Drivers, Coaches, competition personnel and event attendees, and repeated or flagrant unsafe behavior or actions.
To my knowledge robots falling over accidentally (yes 20’ on an 18" base is questionable!) did not result in any disqualifications but I don’t know if any penalties were applied.
Are scoring objects introduced into other fields by a robot on a different field legal to score?
From when I played Bowled Over my senior year, FTC States in VA, I saw maybe ONE scissor lift fall over out of the field. If I remember correctly the refs just let it stay there. Gave the team a warning I think.
^To answer that I want to say no because it disrupts the parity you have between red and blue scoring objects.
I believe this will be a relentless restriction on flying robots… right?
No, the Round Up Animation clearly had a flying robot. However the anti-gravitational motors appear to still be on back order…
No, I don’t mean they are not allowed. If one can be built with 3d printed pieces, if not operated correctly, it is very possible to completely leave the field, therefore causing disqualification according to vex convention. Well, flying bots are all vex builders’ dreams and they are for sure pretty common in animation videos…
Bowled Over had my favorite way to score out of all the robotics games I’ve played. If you placed a ball in a crate, you can raise a crate for extra points at the end of the match. you gain 10 points for raising it 10 inches high. But you get an additional 10 points for every additional 6 inches you raise it.
I can imagine 10 years down the road when flying motors are introduced. The field will become much more complex and the games might have multiple levels to them, including hovering things. It sounds so sci-fi just talking about it!
I know, that was the robot I linked to. I always link to the entire thread, then a specific page, incase people want to read the disscussion about that post.
That’s reasonable. 
Anyway, I think I have seen/heard of robots tipping onto the field wall. If a robot tipped forward onto a wall, and collapsed the lift while driving forward, it could be maybe be done in an attempt to right themselves…
I almost want to try it now, but our team’s field is raised 3 ft. :eek:
The last tournament we were at a robot rammed another robot into the wall. The robot tipped leaving just their drive base in the field. That’s the closest I’ve seen to a robot fully leaving the field.
Is it legal to remove another robot from the field? Probably not, but there is no specific rule against it. Then again, common sense always applies.
They can always just click the link in the upper right, or you can provide that link which offers the best of both worlds (links to the whole thread but jumps to the post you want)
Thanks, I have never thought to do that before. Maybe I will start doing that in the future. Thanks for the idea.