Regulations, revised

[Alistair Lynn]

Hi all-

I had a look at revising the regulations we issue as part of the rules.

The current regulations accumulated over time, so this is an attempt to

boil them down into a form which is logical, short, and clear.

Others at the Southampton Doing on Wednesday (Murray Colpman, lilafisch, Tom

Leese, Freddie Nash, and Giorgios Karatziolas) kindly looked over this for

me, and their feedback is now included.

For reference, the old regulations are in section 2 of the rules[1].

Proposed new regulations:

"1. The Judge's decision is final.

2. All robots must be safe.

  a. This is defined considering safety concerns including but not

     limited to:

    i. sharp edges;

    ii. the effects of impact at speed;

    iii. fire risks from the battery (see regulation 8)

  b. No robots will be permitted to compete without passing a safety

     and compliance inspection.

  c. Student Robotics may reinspect your robot and invalidate previous

     inspections at any time.

3. Any assistance from Student Robotics staff and volunteers is provided

   without guarantees.

4. Competitors are expected to behave within the spirit of good

   sportsmanship.

5. Competitors must take reasonable measures to avoid their robot

   damaging the arena, or anything within it, including other robots.

   This is a non-contact sport.

6. All robots must be fully autonomous once started. No remote control

   systems are permitted.

7. At the start of each match, all competing robots must fit within a

   cube with edges of length 500mm. Expansion beyond this limit during

   the course of a match is permitted.

8. The Lithium-Polymer battery is the most dangerous part of a Student

   Robotics electronics kit and must be treated accordingly. Whenever a

   robot is in operation, its battery must be:

  a. securely held in place;

  b. adequately protected from damage even in the presence of damage to

     the rest of the robot;

  c. connected only to the main input of the power board.

9. Additional batteries or other energy storage must be explicitly and

   individually approved by Student Robotics on the forum before use.

10. A robot's main power switch must be easily accessible and on the

    top of the robot whenever the robot is powered.

11. All robots must have badge mountings as described in Specification

    2.

12. All electronics on a robot must be:

  a. securely held in place;

  b. easily removable.

If you are unclear on any of these regulations, consult the docs

or ask on the forum."

A few specific notes on these:

* The rule about black wires being ground was never strongly enforced,

  and is actually violated by us by shipping black µ-USB cables. It's a

  good recommendation but probably shouldn't be a regulation.

* The rule about things being connected to the motor rail was to ensure

  that people don't connect things directly to the battery. This is now

  regulation 8c which requires that the battery is only used for the

  main power board input.

* Regulation 3 gets the word "any" so as not to imply that we are

  necessarily going to provide assistance.

* The injury on the robots rule becomes Regulation 2 which is much more

  of a catch-all, which protects us from the unexpected cases like noise

  from the hovercraft in 2013.

* The regulation on ownership of the kit is redundant as this is now

  covered in the team leader agreement.

* The rule on radio transmitters was only a side-effect of not allowing

  remote control, so it was removed for redundancy.

* An item on sportsmanship appeared to cover cases like people putting

  arena markers on the side of their robots.

Since the regulations aren't game-specific I thought I'd put this in the

direction of the main mailing list rather than srobo-game.

Thoughts and opinions?

Alistair

[1] http://srobo.org/rules

[Rob Spanton]

Hi,

> I had a look at revising the regulations we issue as part of the rules.
> The current regulations accumulated over time, so this is an attempt to
> boil them down into a form which is logical, short, and clear.

Could you break this up into several patches and post them for review in
gerrit please? Then it's actually going to be possible to discuss them.

Cheers,

Rob