[EricH]

Originally Posted by Woolly

Indeed. Though, what if you had an extendable wall made with bumper-like construction that you could use to play lead-blocker to allow offensive robots to get to scoring/feeding positions without harassment.
It's not intended to damage robots, it's intended to shove them out of the way. You might even be able to have it actuate out at an angle so that you can push them off to one side.

If you did it right, you would probably be A-OK, at least as far as the robot rules are concerned. (We'll leave out the question of how you work it with your alliance partners--that's your problem.)

Doing it right would mean something like a snowplow or cowcatcher (the angled part of the quoted post), covered with some form of padding and/or cloth, designed to stay in the bumper zone and the 54" cylinder when deployed but start inside the frame perimeter. I would say that that would be quite legal as regards both robot and gameplay rules (though I do suggest checking to make sure your actuation method is legal).