Unofficial Q&A Question List

[B-Kinney]

Hello, everyone.

I have created this thread to provide a clear place for people without access to the Q&A system to post questions that have not yet been officially answered yet.

If anyone with access to the Official Q&A sees a question here, and decides it would be a good question for the Official Q&A, I would recommend that they post it there, and make a post in this thread saying that they have done so.

And of course, please don’t post any questions here (and especially not in the Official Q&A) unless you have checked the latest manual and the Official Q&A, and still can’t find an answer to your question.

Thank you, and I hope this thread can help reduce the problems with the new Q&A system.

[B-Kinney]

To start off, there is the question of whether robots are allowed to park on the opponent’s alliance platform, or even touch the top of the platform at all.

As @meng said in another thread, the referees at the unofficial SingVex tournament in June ruled that the answer to both of these questions was no, and so robots were disqualified for accidentally touching the top of their opponents’ Alliance Platform.

Below is a potential version of the question:

According to the definition of Platform (emphasis mine):

Alliance Platforms are denoted by their red or blue structural PVC pieces, and can only be used for Parking by Robots of the same color Alliance as the Platform.

And according to the definition of Parked:

Parked – One of two Robot statuses.
• Alliance Parked – A Robot status. A Robot is Alliance Parked when it is:
o Contacting its Alliance Platform.
o Not contacting the foam field tiles or white tape.
• Center Parked – A Robot status. A Robot is Center Parked when it is:
o Contacting the Center Platform.
o Not contacting any Alliance Platform.
o Not contacting the foam field tiles or white tape.

My interpretation of the current rules is that it would be legal for a robot to place itself on an opponent’s alliance platform in an attempt to prevent the opponent from parking. (However, this would be considered a solely defensive action.)

This is because the definition of Parked does not give any special status to robots sitting on an opponent’s Alliance Platform.

However, the referees at the unofficial SingVex 2018 tournament held this June interpreted this rule differently. They said that since Alliance Platforms “can only be used for Parking by Robots of the same color Alliance as the Platform”, robots were not allowed to park on their opponents’ Alliance Platform, or place any part of the robot top of it. Robots who touched the tops of the opponents’ Alliance Platform were disqualified from the match.

1. Is it legal for a robot to intentionally drive onto (or otherwise contact) an opponent’s Alliance Platform to prevent them from Parking?

2. Is it legal for a robot to contact an opponent’s Alliance Platform in a way that does not prevent the opponent from Parking, or at a time when no opponents are trying to park?

3. If the answer to (1) or (2) is no, would it be legal to intentionally place scoring objects on the opposing Alliance Platform in a way that would prevent an opponent from parking? (I assume no.)

4. Am I correct that if any of the above actions are illegal, that these actions would result in a warning and not a DQ, unless the action was match-affecting?