20th FRA General Meeting - 18 April 2009

Minutes of the 20th FRA Governing Body Meeting

Saturday 18th April 2009

Committee Present Kane Aston, Geoff Smith, Karoline Pannell, Trevor Wright, Pete Lale, Clive Brown, Tom Kane, John Bell, Mike Hamilton-Macy, Gilbert Grimm, Ed Wallace and Tim Bence
Apologies Tony Somerfield and Leo van Miert
Members present Andy Kane, Alan Young

Items of Discussion

1. Accountancy Fees

The committee was presented with the details of the annual accountancy fees and asked to agree that all were happy for them to be paid.
Decision Agreed (Unanimous)

2. Matters arising from the last meeting

Review of the minutes from the previous meeting. Areas discussed briefly in more detail were the decision to allow the use of passive hammers in class four arenas which will be continued and the Featherweight championships which received positive feedback, Kane expressed how impressed he had been with the event and also on the quality of the current featherweight robots

3. Shane Swan's acceptance onto the Governing Body

The application for a position on the governing body by Shane Swan was received on the morning after applications were due to close due to technical problems with Shane's computer. The committee were asked as to whether they were happy to accept Shane's application.
Decision Agreed (Unanimous)

4. Constitutional Changes

The constitution of the FRA was discussed at length with the aim to provide further clarity around certain areas, most specifically around definitions of membership of the FRA and the details of the governing body (sections 3 and 4 of the constitution). Further amendments to the other sections were also made, principally to align with the clarifications above.
As the constitution states that any changes must be voted on by the membership the following course of events was agreed:
•There will be a consultation period with the membership of the association lasting thirty days during which the amended constitution will be made available for the membership to review and provide feedback on the amendments.
•The governing body will review the feedback and assuming no major alterations are required as a result the amendments will be put to the membership of the association for ballot of acceptance

5. Introduction of a Code of Conduct and Disciplinary Procedure

A proposed code of conduct document was provided to the committee in the light of a couple of issues at recent events, it was discussed as to whether the code of conduct would be appropriate to help provide the FRA with a method to consistently deal with any incidents that occur in the future. It was agreed that it should be referenced to within the constitution (one of the amendments as per item 4 does this) and that the committee should review and provide any further feedback as soon as possible. The implementation of the code of conduct was put to vote.
Decision Agreed (Unanimous)

6. Fan-fic Forum Representative

The committee was asked for their agreement to the appointment of a representative, Martijn Benschop, for the fan-fic section who will be responsible solely for being lead point of contact for any questions/ information relating to the fan-fic section of the FRA forum. The proposal put forward for vote was based on the provision that Martijn must be a fully paid up member of the association.
Decision Agreed (12 for, 2 Abstain)

7. Forum Upgrade and Website

The committee discussed the recent forum upgrade which is now complete, some concern was raised that there was less activity since the change although this is believed in part to be due to natural changes in usage rather than the upgrade itself.
The suggestion was made that a user category for the committee e.g. Roboteer Representative or FRA Committee” be created and all members of the committee would be assigned to this group to aid identification of FRA reps on the forum
The website was also discussed and a request from Kane was made for all the committee to review the site and provide feedback, some specific areas were discussion around the “About Us” section and the contacts pages as well as a suggestion of the addition of an history section under the control of the FRA as opposed to the “Robots Rule” section hosted within the FRA site
Ed Wallace offered his assistance to Kane with these tasks

8. Membership Database

Discussed the benefits of having a membership database to enable better communication across the FRA, Kane will be looking into this and will report back at a later date

9. Non-members competing at events

There are no current issues of non-members competing at events, it was agreed that it was at the discretion of the Event Organiser's and that any issues should be raised with them in the first instance. Discussion around how much mandate the FRA would have, specifically it should challenge in the case of FRA named events e.g. FRA UK Heavyweight Championship

10. User Forum Ban

Discussion around a forum user who had previously been banned for the forum for poor behaviour a year ago, they had recently asked if they can be allowed access to the forum again and apologised for previous actions. It was put to vote as to whether to re-instate the account.
Decision Agreed (13 For, 1 Abstain)

11. Lithium Rules

There is a need to re-write the build guidelines to cover the use of A123 cells in heavyweight robots after the extended trials. Ed Wallace offered to re-write the relevant section for review and agreement at the next meeting.

12. Weight Reps

It was agreed that there is no current need for specific weight reps as the move away from regional representation negates the need.

13. Technical Contacts

The technical contacts on the website were reviewed with Andy Kane (Hydraulics) and Mike Lambert (Pneumatics) both being agreed as relevant and still willing to provide technical expertise.

14. AOB

Event Security The use of wristbands at some recent events was well received and the committee believe it should be adopted as best practice as part of ensuring that only people specifically allowed within the pits should be allowed. It was also suggested that signs on any separation fencing / cordon should be put up to make it clear that access should be for roboteers only.
Heavyweight Trophy The current heavyweight trophy has no more space available for further winners names, Gilbert offered to purchase the trophy (as current holder) to provide funds towards a replacement. It was agreed that the FRA will look into purchasing a new trophy and that the current trophy should remain the property of the FRA but should remain in the possession of Gilbert.
Decision Agreed (Unanimous)
Use of Nitrogen brief discussion on the merits of using nitrogen rather than carbon dioxide, it was pointed out that the CO2 in use was actually originally atmospheric and therefore no additional gas was being created through use in the robots
One driver, one robot – in competition events the expectation is that a driver should only be competing with a single robot to avoid the situation of having multiple “bites at the cherry”.
Phase out of 40Mhz A number of safety issue with 40Mhz were raised, due to the increasing number of robots in certain melee fights due to the use of 2.4Ghz controllers there have been a number of issues where robots on 40Mhz have been out of control/ uncontrollable due their signal being drowned out by the large number of higher frequency controllers. Proposal was put forward that as from Jan 2010 all featherweight or larger robots should use either 459Mhz or 2.4Ghz Decision Agreed (Unanimous)
Items for discussion at the next meeting A number of items were suggested for inclusion on the agenda of the next meeting:
•Review of the Rebel Robots event report
•Review of the Roaming Robots arena trials
Health & Safety at events in general robots arming up without weapon locks, being rolled around outside of the arena on their wheels etc.