Is grappling onto the pole legal

VEX V5 Technical Support
#1

I was just wondering is grappling onto the pole legal because the rulebook does not give rules for hanging so can someone clarify

#2

Yes, I dont know how they would expect people to climb without being able to grab the pole

#3

I would move this to the official Q&A so that Karthik can give an official answer. I also do not see anything in the rule book about hanging.

#4

Un-needed Q&A posts are exactly what karthik does not want. If there is no rule against it, it is legal.

#5

Ok. I just thought that you could clarify because there has not been any previous posts on this question.

#6

https://vexforum.com/t/grappling-hook/34908/1

This one still applies too
https://vexforum.com/t/answered-renamed-s1-and-grappling-hooks/23807/1

#7

thanks for the help

#8

While not official, this is how I looked at it. How can you hang if you can’t grapple the pole?

So off to the rules to see what they say… Here’s the no climbing the fence in the middle rule nor supporting yourself by the side walls…

Now go back to definitions to see what field elements are. Hanging bar is not in the field element definition. I think this is on purpose. Is it covered in supporting structure? I don’t think so.

#9

I’d say it’s legal. Think about the pole this way: it’s a means to score points. That thinking would imply that the pole is not a field element, but rather a game element (in the same category as the stars and cubes), and you can grapple game elements. So I think they would be okay with your robot grappling the pole.

Another way that it could be legal is this:

Let’s assume that the pole is indeed a field element. Grappling and/or hooking onto the pole would then mean you’re anchoring yourself to the field, and SG8 would apply in this case. However, they allow you to score points if you’re low or high hanging off the pole. Such a hang would mean that you have to touch the pole, and practically speaking, your manipulator(s) would have to be secure on the pole, which would practically mean grappling or hooking onto the pole. If the GDC wants robots to be hanging off the poles, then they would expect that the hanging pole does not qualify as a field element for purposes of SG8, which means that SG8 would not apply to robots grappling the poles. Thus I’d say that grappling the pole is legal.

The last game to have a dedicated fixture for scoring bonus points was Toss Up. SG8 in this game was SG9 in Toss Up, and it explicitly provided an exception for the bar.

SG8 in this year’s game does not provide such an explicit exception, so I can see where the confusion comes from. I’d expect Karthik and the GDC, upon reading these threads, to update the manual to include an explicit exception, just like they did to resolve conflicting rules in Nothing But Net.

#10