What is the minimum width for the base

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what is the minimum width we could make the base chassis and still be stable.

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That would largely depend on your center of mass and strategy.

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I think that depends on how tall the robot is and how the weight is distributed. Possibly also what type of drivetrain you have (A mecanum is easier to drive with all four wheels making contact with the carpet, a 6wd drop-center will rock inherently).

@Lexeo sorry for the redundancy.

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Rules wise there is no minimum as long as you abide by all the rules regarding battery, bumpers, frame protrusions, etc…

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According to the rules (specifically bumper rules) the minimum that any robot can be is 6"x6".

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I have 3 answers.

  1. There are no rules about the minimum width. The only rule of relevance is the maximum perimeter lenght of 120"

  2. You have to be able to fit all the obligatory components like your battery, RoboRIO and electronics. You might also want to make sure everything respects the bumper rules as well as respect any other rule to make your robot FRC legal.

  3. This is more of a tip. Rotation of the drivetrain creates a lot a friction. Having a long and narrow robot with traction wheels might cause your robot to not be able to rotate, or rotate very slowly while drawing too much power from your battery. You want to take this into consideration. Avoid having a drivetrain too narrow in comparison to your lenght (space in between wheels) to avoid getting that problem, or replace one or more pair of wheels with omniwheels that don’t have friction when going sideways.

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I don’t think this is true. R401 says in part, “If a FRAME PERIMETER side is shorter than 12 in. (~31 cm), that entire FRAME PERIMETER side must be protected by a BUMPER.” So you can make your robot 1 inch square, as long as you have bumpers that completely cover each side.

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You need to be able to fit a battery and the other required electronics.

So while in theory you can make it 1x1, oyu need to be able to fit a 3x7 battery somewhere

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I might add that I attempted to design the smallest possible FRC legal robot I could before kickoff, for the fun of it. I achieved an 8.25" x 8.5" robot. It’s really hard to design something this small, and exponentially harder to make smaller.

This might not actually help but thought it would be interesting to share here.

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received_13625595311657412048Ă—2048 251 KB

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If somebody ever builds that robot, please add a protective shell and make it look like this:

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You could make onw reaaally small, take a look at Howdybots Short Stack I think that is the smallest robot that can me made according to the game manual

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That is amazingly small! Of course, there’s no room for any actual mechanisms, but…

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