I had some students that were brainstorming and had the question as to what would happen if your robot were to lift up a string or other portion of a robot expansion and lift it out of the field and release it, causing it to exit the field. Their reading matched with the recent ruling, 1364, that G14 does not apply and the team would be forced into the penalty. My argument was that <G3> and <G1> would apply meaning that the team should not be given a disqualification when it was not their expansion that caused it to leave the field, but a separate action. Which interpretation would be correct?
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Official Q&A: VRC 2022-2023: Spin Up
1403: Intentionally causing expansion to leave the field during Endgame
Answered by committee
There is a difference between an action that causes a robot to expand outside of the field (triggered expansion, deflection, bounce, etc.) and a completely separate action that takes an already-deployed expansion and actively removes it from the field. The first is an <S2> violation that will result in a Disqualification, and the second is not.
To provide some additional and specific examples:
- Robot RED1 expands a string, which bounces off of Robot BLUE1 and leaves the field. RED1 has violated <S2>.
- Robot RED1 expands a string that stays within the field. BLUE1 gathers the string up and dumps it out of the field. RED1 has not violated <S2>, but the interaction may result in other penalties for BLUE1.