hi everyone,
our team is debating the rules for this year’s robot. when the arm bot is fully extended, after match has started, what is the maximum front to back length a robot can be?
thanks!
slloyd
72 inches.
72" by 72" out side of alliance zone, but it can be as tall as u want
It has to fit within a hypothetical 72" by 72" box (regardless of orientation). The actual maximum length depends on many factors, including the width of your robot, the width of your arm, whether it has a turret, etc (all those factors change how it fits into the 72" box).
If you align the virtual 72x72 box along a diagonal, you can be significantly longer than 72 inches. A trivially thin robot could be almost 102 inches long and fit on the diagonal of the virtual box. With a 34" wide robot (28" starting max plus bumpers) your robot could stretch nearly 85 inches from back bumper to extreme arm extension and still fit in the virtual box - about 40 inches outside your starting volume.
To be more specific, your active playing configuration must fit in a imaginary 72"x72" box, with no height restrictions. Keep in mind the playing configuration means from the outer most tip of one side, to the outer most tip of the other side. This means bumpers are included.
If your appendage is centered on the midplane of your robot here’s a good way to see if you fit in the envelope:
The diagonal of the 72 x 72 box is 72/sin45 or 101.82 inches. If you back the robot up to the corner of the box and your robot is x inches wide, you will lose x/2 worth of the diagonal on that end (tan45 = 1). If your appendage is y inches wide at the tip, you will lose y/2 worth of the diagonal on the other end. So, your total length from the back of the robot to the tip of your appendage at maximum deployment can be no longer than 101.82 minus one half the sum of the widthes at each end.
This is as advantage for an octagonal shaped chassis like ours - we are 18.75 inches wide at the back which gives us an extra 4.625 inches available reach versus a full 28 inch wide chassis.