Head referee ruled this as legal. If so, this should be the new standard. They are able to build skyrise and score cubes at the same time.
This tactic has been used in VEXU for the past couple of years, I suggest looking at team OYES’s robot “Muppet” and this one, as great examples of tethered bots!
Wow 
Which team is this?
Theirs had a solid polycarb reinforcement though. That thing looks like a massive risk of entanglement to me, although that’s just based on a static image rather than seeing how it actually moves.
Hmm, interesting. It looks like it’s covered with mesh, but it looks pretty thick, probably thick enough so robots don’t get tangled with it. But of course, we would have to see how it moves to know for sure.
This is my robot (thanks for sharing btw). I will post a video when I get it. The tether is actually backed with polycarb although you can’t see it in the picture. The wires are run through slick flat nylon tubing.
The polycarb goes for a couple of sections of wire, the rest is nylon. Kudos to SYNC for coming up with it. They absolutely crushed everyone in the event. I wanted to prove that one could get entangled with it, so during my elimination match versus them, I drove over them, spun around, got entangled and it was ruled since I did this on purpose, that there was no fault on their team.
Oh well, first time our university has done VEX and the season ended with high expectations moving forward 
Good luck to SYNC and MCEC at world! SoCal represent!
It was polycarb along the whole length. There will definitely be refiments to the tether for worlds. Strategic positioning and driving eliminates any chance for entanglement, unless of course you try to get yourself struck.
Congrats to USC for starting a new team late in the season and building a few robots.
1501_vince wasn’t the first to share a picture of this. Blame the RECF for starting it
Looks like it will be an interesting one to watch.
Yes, that’s why I’m posting. I don’t believe it was legal, but head referee decisions are final and we went with it. Would love some clarification for future robots.
I always thought the rule (R3.C) was against risk of entanglement, not the intention not to entangle since obviously I could just avoid the section of the field your extension takes up. Also, driving over the extension was not as easy as the team claimed.
The only matches we played the entire day where anyone came close to hitting the tether was when you intentionally started spinning in place on the tether right next to our protected zone. If someone has messy wiring is it entanglement if I drive my robot over and start trying to get stuck on them, it could happen but I would have to try.
Hey guys you should just ask an official question, but I think this might help.
https://vexforum.com/t/answered-r7-and-thethers/26535/1&highlight=thethers
Official Q&A’s similar to this have been asked…
https://vexforum.com/t/answered-multi-part-robot/27651/1
https://vexforum.com/t/answered-unnecessary-risk-of-entanglement/26865/1
Yeah I would just make sure you guys add metal for worlds.
Metal seems like a step down from polycarb. We will do a lot more testing on different drive bases and make adjustments.
Here is the thread that SYNC showed the Refs: https://vexforum.com/t/answered-partner-minibot/27092/1&highlight=tether
apart from the whole legality thing I think this is just a cool robot design
Ok, here is some video of the competition.
Semi Final 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9ebkQw-39o&feature=youtu.be
Semi Final 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFZ6WgqbpfU
As you can see, the USC robot tries pretty hard to get stuck and pretends to be when they are not (they have no problem driving away at the end of Semi 2)
Final 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lijMYUdaJc
I will make a thread about this robot and reveal each component in more detail. This robot was built from start to finish in 5 days. It was very challenging to pull off but pretty fun yet frustrating to build. I think there are some big strategic flaws with this design, but I’ll go into that later
*Also, autonomous isn’t included in the videos but I promise you didn’t miss much. Pretty much 45 seconds of my robot not doing anything.
Most definitely. Its a very hard robot to beat.
That tether is pretty far out of your way for scoring. How about instead of testing your own destructive limits, you go score? That seemed like a pretty risky move on your part–you might have been dq’d for intentional entanglement or you might have damaged the tether.
Realize, the number one rule in Vex is COMMON SENSE. Just because the rules don’t specifically say not to do something stupid means that you should do it.
Congrats to SYNC for building such an effective “trio” of robots.