[JesseK]

The frame design is similar to a crab drive, and the wheels will be cantilevered. The KOP wheel dimensions and the strict bumper rules have really restricted the simplicity of this design, but we're not afraid to overcome it.

We will have an 'upper' frame and a 'lower' frame that will have hard connections to each other. Unfortunately, the upper frame will be above the top of the bumpers, and the lower frame will be at the very bottom of the bumper. Due to the cantilevered wheels, there will be a gap between the frame and the bumpers. The foam is meant to attach to the outer perimeter of both frames, and fill the gap to become the outer edge of our robot on the sides. This is so impacts will be spread between the upper and lower frames. There is no other simple solution to this, since moving the upper frame out further would overcomplicate the whole frame design.

The foam is used in an industrial application at Micron (one of our local sponsors) and their mentors said that as long as the force is spread out over a few square inches the foam will be ok since there will also be bumpers to absorb the impacts. So essentially the foam is like an inner bumper that is part of our robot and meant to also redirect some of the impact force to the upper frame.

Yet due to the design of the lower frame, and the unique feature of the drive train, the foam cannot extend into the corners like we were originally thinking...so we will have to derive a solution for that by the time the whole drive train is done. We'll sit on it until we find a simple solution that doesn't require intricate welding (which is what we've come up with so far).