Limit Switches and 54 Inches

FIRST General Forum
1

Hello all,

My team has been running into issues when dealing with the 54" rule. If my team decides to use limit switches on one of our extendable arms (that is used to climb up the pyramid), would this help us avoid the 54" rule?

Our robot is planning on approaching the corner of the pyramid, extending our ladder, and grab the first rung. However, because of our design, our ladder is too short to grab the second and third rung.

If we use a limit switch to stop the amount of distance our arm can extend past our robot frame, because we don’t need to reach as far on the first rung (even though it still has the potential to reach farther), and we then decide to rotate our robot on the pyramid so that our ladder is now back within our frame (and we are now only dealing with an 84" height limit) will our robot still pass inspection for the 54" rule?

Thanks in advance,
~4294

2

As I read it, the 54" rule does not prohibit robots mechanically capable of extending past 54", only those that actually do so during match play. If you use software to prevent this from ever happening, you should be good to go.

3

Jake,
You will be asked if your robot can extend beyond the 54" limit during inspection. If the robot can but you have a program feature that prevents that, you will be asked to demonstrate it. There is risk involved here. Even though you take steps in software to limit your dimension, if it should exceed that during match play due to a software error or some other kind of failure, you may encounter one of the penalties outlined in The Game manual.