1)  Rescuing the robot

      This year there are 3 situations that may happen when the team touches an active (i.e. autonomous) robot to rescue it and bring it back to Base for restart.  This information comes from Rule 31, Touch Penalty, and Rule 26, Touching the Autonomous Robot, as well as the description of the Missions.

       a)  the robot has some part "in Base".   There is no penalty.

       b)  the robot is attempting the Obstacles mission.  There is no penalty

       c)  the robot is completely outside Base, and not attempting the Obstacles.  There is a Game Penalty assessed, by putting a Roof Debris object on the runway (or moving one to the Light Blue region).

  It is okay for one of the team members to grab the robot at any time (footnote:  Rule 16, Strategic/Precision Stop).  They are not required to ask permission.  The team may also ask the referee to rescue the robot for them.  Sometimes that is faster, easier, and has less impact on the field, since most referees have longer arms than most team members.

2)  Basket on the robot

     This is actually a complex questions this year, and I cannot give you a yes or no answer.  Whether a basket is subject to the Junk Penalty depends on whether it is considered to be part of the robot or not.  If not, then it is a Strategic Object (Rule 12) and would be subject to a Junk Penalty at the end of the match.  Baskets that are part of the robot will not incur a Junk Penalty.

  The definition of the robot in Rule 10 is very flexible.  It allows any team-supplied object to be considered part of the robot if it is designed not to separate from the rest of the robot by hand.  It can be joined by "any method, any configuration", which is very, very flexible.  Robot attachments are NOT examined via the Gravity Test (Rule 15), which only applies to mission models.  Rule 11, which defines Attachments, doesn't add additional information--it just says that attachments are sometimes part of the robot and sometimes not.

   It is the referee's determination whether something is part of the robot or not.  However, if your team has a strategy that you think should allow a basket to be part of the robot, I encourage your team to be prepare to discuss the rule with the table referee.  And maybe alert the head referee about it prior to the tournament.  (You can contact your tournament's head referee via the Tournament Director.)

A basket that "sits" on an arm and luckily doesn't fall off of the arm during normal operation of the robot would NOT be considered part of the robot, in my opinion.

A basket that sits on an arm and is restrained from sliding off the arm during normal operation would probably be considered part of the robot, in my opinion.

An basket that the robot pushes but could easily back away from would NEVER be considered part of the robot, in my opinion.

Steve Scherr
VA/DC FLL Referee Advisor

On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 9:20 AM, Mssuchitra Suchitra <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi ,

 

We are a rookie team , and have some last minute questions. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

 

1) When we send the robot for its missions, if it gets struck on a mission, I believe we can get the robot back to base with some penalty. In this case, can the kids go and pick the struck robot, and the referee would automatically apply the penalty (or) do they need to wait for the permission from the referee ?

 

    Would the penalty in the above case be deduction of points (or) placement of roof debris on the runway ?

 

 

2) Our team has built a basket which sits on the arm of the robot we have built (it is not attached to the robot per se, but sits fine on the robots arm). When this finally reaches the red zone, would we incur junk penalty for this basket as it is not fully attached to the robot....It still stays fine on the robots arm even though it is not attached.

 

Thanks

Suchitra

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