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I301          *It is your team’s ROBOT. The ROBOT and its MAJOR MECHANISMS must be built by the FIRST Tech Challenge team that has registered for the event and intends to use the ROBOT to participate in MATCHES or as part of judged awards.

A MAJOR MECHANISM is a group of COMPONENTS and/or MECHANISMS assembled together to address at least 1 game challenge: ROBOT movement, SCORING ELEMENT manipulation, FIELD element manipulation, or performance of a scorable task without the assistance of another ROBOT.

This rule requires that the ROBOT and its MAJOR MECHANISMS were built by its team but is not intended to prohibit or discourage assistance from other teams (e.g., fabricating elements, supporting construction, writing software, developing game strategy, contributing COMPONENTS, and/or MECHANISMS).

Examples that would generally not be considered MAJOR MECHANISMS, and thus are not subject to this rule include, but are not limited to, the following:

A.      a gearbox assembly,

B.      a COMPONENT or MECHANISM that is part of a MAJOR MECHANISM, or

C.      COTS items.

The intent of this rule is that a team’s ROBOT is a product that’s representative of the current team members’ experience and is intended to discourage complete solutions which are provided wholly by outside organizations or companies. Also see R301.

Similar Rules

Rule R301
R301       *COTS MECHANISMS are legal but have limits. COTS MAJOR MECHANISMS (as defined in I301) purposefully designed to complete a game task are prohibited. Allowed exceptions to this rule are:
Rule I304
I304          *Bring the complete ROBOT and supporting equipment to inspection. At the time of inspection, the OPERATOR CONSOLE and the ROBOT with battery must be presented with all MECHANISMS (including all COMPONENTS of each MECHANISM), configurations, and decorations that will be used on the ROBOT in MATCHES without re-inspection per I305.
Rule I305
I305          *Unless the change is listed below, any change to a ROBOT must get re-inspected. A ROBOT may play MATCHES with a subset of the MECHANISMS that were present during inspection provided the reconfigured ROBOT still complies with all ROBOT construction rules. Only MECHANISMS that were present during the inspection may be added, removed, or reconfigured between MATCHES without re-inspection per this rule. If a ROBOT is modified after its most recently passed inspection, it must be re-inspected before the ROBOT is eligible to participate in a MATCH.
Rule I302
I302          *Enter only 1 ROBOT. Each team may only inspect and play MATCHES with 1 ROBOT at a FIRST Tech Challenge event. Each FIRST Tech Challenge team may only participate in 1 concurrent event at a time.