With the new rules for the bumpers that require the bumpers to fully surround the robot is there anything that would prevent the bumpers from being at different heights? For example, if the top of the bumper on the front was 1" - 2" lower than the bumpers on all other sides of the robot.
As long as they are in the bumper zone you are fine.
The rulebook explicitly says bumpers do not need to be parallel to the floor as long as they are in the bumper zone. The key is the bumpers entirely fall within the volume contained by the floor and the plane that is 7.5" off of the floor.
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Brings back memories: TJ² - Team 88 (2018) - The Blue Alliance
Pretty sure @troy_dietz has some 330 stories of some odd (but legal) bumpers used to clear obstacles and provide enough clearance (2016 maybe?)
It was 2018/19* and a few other much older years iirc that we did weird stuff (not 2016 though).
Basically, the rules allow for variable height and position bumpers due to the provided tolerances and the bumper zone. We wanted the tallest bumpers possible at the “best” nominal height, to prevent other robots getting over or under us. This can create ground clearance problems in some areas, like the corners of the 2018 and 19 platforms. You might get high-centered by a low bumper. This problem is doubled on swerve robots.
It seems like a lot of these pictures have been yeeted by imgur, but you can see the slight V shape at the bottom back here:
The bumper backing wood is 5.5" tall at the corners, and 4.5" tall in the center. The front is just open for manipulators.
A more obvious example of this is 548 2012:
*we used the same bumpers in these years…worked out as the field obstacles are identical. I do not recommend this anymore due to more aggressive driving in recent years.
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