The Wall

We haven’t seen a wall bot here in Southern California all season so VOLT Team Z players decided to build one after figuring the design could present a formidable challenge.

Now, we know that VEX game rules in general discourage purely defensive robots. Rule <G12> states that “VEX Robotics Competition In the Zone is intended to be an offensive game. Teams that partake in solely defensive strategies will undergo extra scrutiny…the referees will err on the side of the offensive Robot.”

However, there is nothing in the rules that expressly prohibit a purely defensive robot.

We arrived at the tournament with our only care being whether the bot would work (especially after it was finished the night before). Silly us.

We were soon told by an official that we would not be able to compete with the bot. Huh?

This official said our wall bot was “not in spirit of VEX”. Then he said the referees were inexperienced and wouldn’t be able to clearly apply rules to our bot. Then he said the rules prohibited any bot with the “intent of not scoring objects but only pinning , trapping, or blocking other robots”. No such rule. Then we were told we would be ruining the day of other teams because they would not be able to score. After twenty minutes of back and forth, he relented and warned us to be careful and that the referees might disqualify us. Cold comfort.

The reaction from other teams was even more perplexing. Rather than use their energy to figure out ways to overcome a challenge they hadn’t seen all season (and there ALWAYS are ways), some teams decided to use that energy to complain to the referees and the tournament organizers. We actually saw an adult in a heated discussion with the tournament organizer about the illegality of our wall bot.

The teams that decided to confront the challenges the wall bot created resorted to different tactics. Some tried to push the bot out of the way (one successfully pushed us into the 20 point zone which we couldn’t get out of (design change!)), one tried to go over us and ended up flipping over. A few decided to make some contact with our bot near the corner of the zones and then stop moving and immediately claim we were entangling them or pinning or trapping them against the field perimeter. We believe in the NBA and soccer they call this “flopping”. Thankfully, this behavior was ignored by the well-trained referees.

In the end, Team Z’s wall bot ended the qualifying rounds with a record of 4-1, finished 11th and made the playoffs from a field of thirty-eight teams.

As we were leaving, the official who initially denied our bot said “Just because other teams are doing something doesn’t mean you have to follow it too.“ We’ll take that as a compliment as we also believe creativity brings VEX to life and makes it more fun (think Team 8000 last year!).