We have a situation where a team has talked about programming their robot to collect all the balls in a starting corral during their run. Their robot would store all the balls within its own ball hopper. At the end of their run, they would pick up the robot to return to a Starting Position and empty out all the balls. In our heads this would be allowed for the following reason: RSC7 a. states that "Upon handling the Robot, it must be immediately brought back to any legal Starting Position." RSC7 b. states that "Any Ball being controlled by the Robot while being handled must be removed from the Field. Controlled requires that the Robot was manipulating the Ball and not simply touching it, e.g. if the Ball moves with the Robot either vertically or while turning, the Robot is controlling the Ball."
This situation could result in the following situation where the robot is still in the Starting Corral, has control of the balls in its hopper, but the balls are touching the 2-D plane of the Starting Corral. This creates the following dilemma. RSC7 would allow for the Programmer to bring the robot back to a Starting Position thus legally removing the balls contacting the floor and creating a Cleared Status (5 pts). But... rule G18 blue box states "This rule(talking about handling a robot) is intended so Teams can fix damaged Robots or help get their Robots “out of trouble.” It is not intended for Teams to use as part of a strategy to gain an advantage during a Match. If a Head Referee determines that a Team is strategically exploiting this rule, they may be Disqualified from said Match."
Now we also know that RSC7's Note says: "This rule only applies to Programming Skills Matches. Driving Skills Matches are still governed by <G18>, especially for strategic violations." This would seem to indicate that G18 isn't applicable for programming matches.
So if I was a Head Ref for a match where this happened I would apply the "benefit of the doubt" (Page 8 of the Game Manual) and rule the corral cleared and award the 5 pts. Is that the correct interpretation of the Game Manual?
Thank you,