[FrankJ]

I think most of the bumper confusion is teams trying to fit the rules to their robot rather than the robot to the rules. The 2011 rules had the effect that the minimum frame segment was 6" since the minimum bumper length was 6 inches. IE no round robots. Gaps in bumpers were not allowed in 2011. I think the current rule phrasing came about from changes that allows bumper gaps & round robots. Better phrasing might be segments less than 16" require full bumpers and segment greater than 16" require 8" from each vertex since that is the effect of the current rule.