If a piece of your robot falls off during a match, it is no longer legal. I think that it is up to the referee’s discretion to decide whether it is match affecting or not, and you may be issued a DQ.
I believe it is legal so long as it was unintentional.
The rule states that:
It’s not in this year’s edition of the manual, but I seem to also remember reading in previous years’ manuals that “The intent of this rule is not to penalize teams that inadvertently lose a screw” or something to those lines. Basically don’t have detaching be a key part of your strategy or you’ll get DQ’ed. In case the intent of the question was to ask about tether bots, those are still allowed because they’re connected by the wires between the two mini bots, and thus still count as one robot.
However:
So you can’t just use a rubber band to keep the lift down and then shoot it off when the match starts.
Hope that helps!
Thx that helps extrememly
You’re welcome!
But it is still easy to use robberbands for this purpose. If you simply wrap the rubberband “through itself” so that when it pops off one side still stays attached to some piece of structure. We have done this may times…
@4149G Yes, of course! We use rubber bands for this purpose a lot. Last season we also used them to keep balls from getting stuck in the nooks and crannies of our robot. I simply meant that you should ensure they don’t come loose, or else it would be illegal. (Then again, I have seen some bands on the field after a match, and no DQ’s issued, so I would guess that this isn’t usually a rule that needs to be strictly enforced).