Bumpers

[sunny1118]

If i have an opening that is about 24 inches and both sides are 2 inches each and their is a bumper around those two inches is that allowed?

[BBray_T1296]

There must be 8" of bumpers past each vertex of the robot perimeter. If you wanted a 24" gap in the bumpers, that side of the frame must be 24+8+8=40" long


ROBOTS are required to use BUMPERS to protect all outside corners of the FRAME PERIMETER. For adequate protection, at least 8 in. of BUMPER must be placed on each side of each outside corner (see Figure 4-5). If a side is shorter than 8 in., the entire side must be protected by BUMPER (see Figure 4-6). For the purposes of R19, a round or circular FRAME PERIMETER has an infinite number of corners.
http://frc-manual.usfirst.org/upload/images/2014/1/Figure4-6.jpg

[BBray_T1296]

I realize that my previous post is pretty ambiguous when it comes to your case.

The way I interpret the bumper rules is that around the corner of your robot, there must be 8" of bumper flanking that corner, and if there is a break in the bumpers, there must be 8" before the corner

[sunny1118]

I thought it said something about how it their can be a gap and if the side is less than 8 in then the whole side has to be covered

[DonRotolo]

If i have an opening that is about 24 inches and both sides are 2 inches each and their is a bumper around those two inches is that allowed?
Naturally, you DO know that any opinion you get here on Chief Delphi is as valuable in competiton as the opinion of any random drunk you find on the street.

Nonetheless: a 2" long bumper on a 2" long side of a robot seems OK to me. Looking at the image above, if a side is less than 8 inches, it needs to cover the entire side.

EDIT: Q112 in the FRC Q&A covers this situation, and it says you can have a bumper shorter than 8" ONLY IF that side of the robot is less than 8". For example, a 7" x 47" robot can have 7" bumpers on the short ends. Few teams would implement such a robot, but if you cut the corners and they end up only 6" long, that's OK as long as the bumpers cover the 6" side completely.

[GaryVoshol]

Look at Figure 4-5 in the manual, especially the example on the lower left.

There's a cutout in the side, creating a U-shaped frame. The figure shows that the ends of the U must be at >= 8" wide to accommodate an 8" bumper section.