pic: Effective Aperture of Low Bar Defense
 

Re: pic: Effective Aperture of Low Bar Defense
 

Nice catch! This will undoubtedly come up during strategy discussions today...

Re: pic: Effective Aperture of Low Bar Defense
 

You can get a tad more room than this, assuming the effective wheelbase of your robot is longer than the ramp. But it's an excellent point, I'm glad you posted this! I bet there are teams that didn't catch this.

Re: pic: Effective Aperture of Low Bar Defense
 

Glad someone highlighted this! On 1519 we just realized this last night... I hadn't tried to quantify the minimum (14.15"), but we did notice that a robot 15.9" on the leading edge won't fit. It needs to be shorter at the front, and as Mr Forbes noted, the longer your wheelbase the taller you can be (but still probably only around 15" or so at the leading edge).

Re: pic: Effective Aperture of Low Bar Defense
 

I should add a disclaimer that I made this sketch pretty quickly based on the dimensions provided in the game manual. It may be that the actual construction of the field elements results in slightly different geometry.

Don't build a robot that's 14.14" tall because of my picture. :)

Re: pic: Effective Aperture of Low Bar Defense
 

And for those teams that are kind of new at this....beware that the fields don't always measure exactly what the drawings say they should. It's a good idea to add some extra clearance for something like this. Maybe the 14" number is what you should be shooting for, even if you have a rather long robot. Think about what happens when you go down the other side, too.

Re: pic: Effective Aperture of Low Bar Defense
 

You also only have to be ~14" tall until the CG of your robot passes over the end of the ramp (if you drive slow), then you could be 16" tall for the length of the horizontal portion of the platform. That might be splitting hairs though - easier to design to the 14" limit.

Re: pic: Effective Aperture of Low Bar Defense
 

It's in the picture, but it's worth highlighting that the bar is not centered on the ramp. As a result, the maximum height will vary depending on which side you're approaching it from.

Re: pic: Effective Aperture of Low Bar Defense
 

...and also that the neutral zone would be on its left side in this picture.

Re: pic: Effective Aperture of Low Bar Defense
 

Glad this was brought up and shared with a picture. This was a factor we were considering with our short bot idea yesterday.

Re: pic: Effective Aperture of Low Bar Defense
 

That's fun. You'll need to have a CG that's something like 14" from one end of your robot to make it backwards through the low bar, in that case....

Re: pic: Effective Aperture of Low Bar Defense
 

Or keep the ends of the robot a little bit shorter than the middle.

Re: pic: Effective Aperture of Low Bar Defense
 

I was thinking about this too. Something where the front end of the robot is less than the ~14" limit for when the robot is on the ramp, but the rest of the robot can go up to 15.9" or so and be fine.

Warning- MS Paint incoming:

Re: pic: Effective Aperture of Low Bar Defense
 

something like this would tackle the low goal well, but it would have significant issues with the overhang of the frame. The approach and departure angles make some defenses impassible.

Re: pic: Effective Aperture of Low Bar Defense
 

True. My wheel placements weren't accurate to a real robot, i just kind of drew them on in 10 seconds to show that this was a robot. The wheels would definitely be closer to the outside edge of the frame.