Bumpers

[Michael Corsetto]

Hellfeier675, accept what these seasoned veterans are saying. They know the rules front and back, you have demonstrated that you clearly do not. Take this as a learning experience and move on. We want you to pass inspection just as much as you do.

I'll bring extra bumper material to the Davis Regional for when you don't pass inspection with your current bumpers. See you in 8 days!

[KevinGoneNuts]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

Hellfeier675, accept what these seasoned veterans are saying. They know the rules front and back, you have demonstrated that you clearly do not. Take this as a learning experience and move on. We want you to pass inspection just as much as you do.

I'll bring extra bumper material to the Davis Regional for when you don't pass inspection with your current bumpers. See you in 8 days!

Thank you for your concerns Mr. Corsetto, but team 675 has a solution. Everything is working well, and we are 150% sure that we will pass inspection. Your offering of bumper matieral will not be needed. have a nice few days.

[Hellfeier675]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

Hellfeier675, accept what these seasoned veterans are saying. They know the rules front and back, you have demonstrated that you clearly do not. Take this as a learning experience and move on. We want you to pass inspection just as much as you do.

I'll bring extra bumper material to the Davis Regional for when you don't pass inspection with your current bumpers. See you in 8 days!

Yes I asked this on the FIRST forum and we found the little hidden rule that we seemed to have skipped over. We have fixed our robot quickly and effectively and won't be needing your bumper material. Coming from our veteran team we saw the rules that we observed as one way and were wondering if there was something we were missing. We weren't trying to tell everyone else that they were wrong, we just wanted to find out if we were right. Now, we accommodated for these bumpers just in case we needed to and from the looks of all the kind help from delphi, it seems that we had to add those bumpers in.

We'll see you in a few when we get to sac. Good luck...

[notmattlythgoe]

Glad you guys were able to come up with a quick fix. Good luck at the regional.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Originally Posted by Hellfeier675

We just looked up the past rules and they are written exactly the same.

Sorry, but the rules this year are different in some areas from all previous years. You may not have gaps in the bumper coverage. The Figures 4-2 & 4-3 in R07 are very clear. If you are competing this weekend, I would hope you are working on an alternate plan for your robot design and function. There is one thing that is similar to past years and that is your robot bumper design must satisfy all of R07, not some of the paragraphs.

A. BUMPERS must provide complete protection of the entire FRAME PERIMETER of the
ROBOT (i.e. BUMPERS must wrap entirely around the ROBOT). As part of the 100%
coverage, BUMPERS must protect all exterior corners of the FRAME PERIMETER. For
adequate protection, a full segment of BUMPER must be placed on each side of the corner
(see Figure 3-2).

[TEE]

From the rules, it was my understanding that the frame perimeter by definition is convex, and so the bumpers have to be convex, correct?

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by Hellfeier675

Our frame perimeter is covered bumpers.

Frame Perimeter: Wrap a piece of string around your robot at the level of the bumper zone, the string describes the polygon.

We would argue that having a recess in our frame, because the string does not touch that recessed frame member, that recessed frame member does not have to be covered by bumper.

We aren also basing this judgement off of past bumper rules, being that we only had to cover this bumper perimeter. These definitions are exactly the same as earlier years, and this year's height is identical to the height in the 2008-2009 definitions.

You are correct, the recess does not need bumpers. The line marked by the string that bridges the gap defines the line that needs bumpers (ie, the front of the gap). This gap is required to have a bumper across it because the string defines the BUMPER PERIMETER (even the part that's going across the gap is still considered your BUMPER PERIMETER), and you are required to have 100% bumper coverage of said BUMPER PERIMETER. Since your gap is larger than 8", you cannot legally put a bumper there, but you are still required to do so. You must put something in the gap such that a bumper can go across it to complete your bumper coverage and still have less than 8" unsupported.


The 2008 and 2009 bumper rules used the same definition of BUMPER PERIMETER, but they explicitly state that you are only required to cover 2/3 minimum of that perimeter (see rule <R08> K in 2009 and <R08> bullet point 6 in 2008). The string test was still the same, and the frame in question here would still have the string going across the gap, the difference is that that portion of the perimeter was not required to have bumpers if it was less than 1/3 of the total perimeter.

Last year and this year they require 100% coverage, which prevents cutouts in the robot frame.

[Dmentor]

In addition to the many good posts above, what you are describing was addressed specifically in the following Q&A:
http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=16141