I have to agree with you.
At first I thought of all these arms and things to pickup, shoot. throw, dump, etc. and almost all involved things that left the “box”. This forces you to think outside (“inside”?) the box, because the obvious way is impossible. You have 2 choices: make a square herding bot or rethink how you have done things in the past (especially different from last year, for people who haven’t been around since those other games, as I personally have only been through Overdrive).
i really dont believe that the demention perameters are unreasonable. i mean, come on really!? just keep your designs simple and elegant and you will see that the demention perameters are not constranining.
This is not a matter of me being unable to think of legal ideas, or using the larger playing configuration of the past as a crutch, rather that it does removes several designs that implement this feature and cuts down to the few that don’t. Just to throw out a few that would use a larger playing config:
A tube which when filed with balls is extended like an arm to quickly drop all balls directly over an opponent’s trailer
A Hungry Hungry Hippo style ball pickup
A javelin type pickup
A javelin type disposal
A simple claw and arm
and many more.
And?
There is no rule that says every robot has to be different. And just because each robot looks the same, that means that the matches will be decited by the internal workings of the robot, the drivers and the human players…which is just as interesting.
r 11 is not correctly read…in their video it shows a robot with an arm…
Last year the video also showed a robot breaking the height barrier in the opponent’s home stretch which was against the rules. Don’t read too much into the video, it’s meant to show the game not to show you every rule.
I completely disagree. There are many different creative and effective robot designs that can fit inside the “box”. Designing within limits is part of the challenge, and a big part of real-world engineering.
I’ve seen a lot of people over react to this rule. It’s just another design constraint. Everyone’s response to the wheels is just “well, it’s part of the game” and it is, so is R11.
We are definitely reading the rule properly. If you re-watch the video I assure you that none of the robots break the volume.
After a comb-through closest situation I could find to a <R11> penalty would be in this picture
Here a robot swings its arm to launch a ball and the arm swings outside it’s base area. However as you can see throughout the movie this robot has a square base meaning that it left extra room along its front to allow for this motion.
If you decide to pursue this idea and would like assistance please feel free to contact any 1529 member. Our 2008 robot borrowed this design.
Actually, that is not quite correct. The arm on the robot in question in the animation never extends beyond the vertical projection of the Bumper Perimeter Polygon of the robot. There is a wrist on the arm that allows the hand to rotate up, thereby shortening the effective total tip length of the arm as it swings through the vertical arc. The base of the robot is also not square - it extends to the permitted 28 x 38 inches. I am quite certain of this. 
-dave
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