<R12> 72" x 72" Size Restriction

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by BillP

No, this is NOT within the spirit of the rule as I understand it. The robot in your drawing clearly has a length (front to back) in excess of 72 inches. However, with the current wording of the rule, it would be OK if your robot was round because the "front" of the robot would be poorly defined.

I don't think that we can define the length of a robot in any manner other than the bounding box approach above. Though many robots do have a preferred direction of travel (which might be assumed to be the length axis, with the width axis perpendicular to it), there are numerous robots where no one axis is inarguably the length—the omnidirectional drivetrains, for example. Similarly, the bounding box model is what's used to check the robot footprint at inspection. A robot can do what it pleases within the box, but it has to fit.

While we're on the subject, front and back are not especially meaningful, except that to comply with the rules, teams will arbitrarily designate them (e.g. to place the diagnostic light).