We are building a bot with an opening in the front for the ball to enter inside. Upon reading the rules, we found out that each side of the bot must be covered with at least 8 inches of bumper from every corner, unless one of your sides is less than 8 inches, in which case that entire side must be covered. Does this mean that we have to build our bot in such a way that on each side of the gap, there has to be 8 inches of bumper, or does the gap effectively create two separate sides of the bot and we can have shorter bumpers that are less than 8 inches?
a gap in your frame doesn’t create a new side of the frame perimeter. if your robot’s shape is a rectangle with a gap in the front for balls to come through, the gap and the frame left and right of it all counts as part of that side, so you need a minimum of 8 inches of frame on the left and 8 inches on the right of the gap for your bumpers. i’m sure this has lead many teams to make a robot a minimum of 26 inches wide, 8 inches of frame, 10 inch gap for boulders, 8 inches of frame.
Thank you Austin2046. We are planning on making our bot 28.5 inches wide. Hopefully that will be big enough for easy intake of the ball.
At 28.5" that will leave you a 12.5" opening. Keep in mind with this years bumper rules you may find that even if your bumpers went all the way across the ball “should” lift the front of the bot and roll under. Notice should is in quotes.
The key thing is that the “FRAME PERIMETER” is always a convex shape. It looks like you got this. In order to admit a 10" boulder without compression, a robot side must be at least 8" + 10" + 8" = 26" long. This is probably too long for that side to abut the tower. Make your decisions and take your chances.