Intentional Shoving/Entanglement?

[Laurel2124]

<G12> Strategies aimed solely at the destructing damage, tipping over or Entanglement of Robots are not part of the ethos of the VEX Robotics Competition and are not allowed… If the tipping, Entanglement, or damage is ruled to be intentional or egregious, the offending team may be disqualified from that Match. Repeated offenses could result in a team being Disqualified from the remainder of the competition.

At our most recent competition, we had a match in which a team came straight for our robot at the beginning of the match. They ran into our robot in such a way that threw our aim off and caused us to lose several seconds in the time we expected to be shooting driver loads.

Later, another team let us know that the same thing happened to them with the same team.

The aggressive team was not warned and went on to earn a very high ranking in the tournament.

I saw a very similar thread under Nothing But Net Official Rules Q&A, however, our problem was not during autonomous but the very start of driver control.

Should teams be able to get away with something like this? (Is it legal?)
And if so, is there a way to stop it? We asked a coach from another school who told us we could not do anything until the referee caught it.

Thank you!

[Oliver_W]

You don’t mention whether you were touching your loading zone (but I assume you were, since you were attempting to load your robot). You don’t mention whether the opposing robot entered your loading zone.

The rule in the manual says:

<SG7> Robots may not enter the opposing Alliance’s Loading Zone at any time during the Match.
Minor violations of this rule that do not affect the match will result in a warning. Egregious (match
affecting) offenses will result in a Disqualification. Teams that receive multiple warnings may also
receive a Disqualification at the head referee’s discretion.

However, Karthik also says:

For the purposes of both <SG7> and <SG11>, both direct and indirect contact with Loading Zone is prohibited. Specifically, contacting a Robot which is contacting a Zone, is considered indirect contact, and thus could trigger a violation of either rule.

So what your opponents were doing was probably illegal, but you don’t give enough details to know for certain.

It pays to be aware of rules like this that aren’t in the manual, because your referees may not be aware of them.

In future you might be better off talking to a referee if you’re not sure. I can’t promise that they will get the rules right, particularly for ones like this that rely on the refs having read the Q+A threads, but they’ll at least have a better chance of remembering what happened in that match if you approach them straight afterwards.

[Laurel2124]

Sorry for not clarifying. We were definitely still in our loading zone and they engaged with us while we were in the loading zone. I’m pretty sure they were also very close to entering the loading zone. They came for us as soon as the match started, before we were able to even being moving our robot.

A coach watching nearby also stated that what they were doing was clearly illegal.

Next time we’ll make sure talk to the referee.

Thanks for the quick reply!

[Michael_Nutt]

It is definitely illegal to run into another robot when they are in their loading zone, but outside of the loading zone it is 100% legal.

[n5vei]

Hello. I hope you had fun at the natch otherwise. As stated before you cannot touch anyone in their loading zone. BUT… if you were to have been outside the loading zone… pushing is legal. I cannot remember the post, but Karthik said hat pushing is legal. It is not pinning till it touches the walls or pipe (elements). That is an important strategy though. this game will be a very defensive game in my opinion. I have one team that is going to be a tank for that purpose.
Hope this helps
Bill R.