We took the existing Field Perimeter that you’ve all known and used for years, and redesigned it from the ground-up. Some notable improvements include:
A simplified, snap-together design. A single person can construct the entire field in about 15 minutes
PVC Wall extrusions. Totaling at about 90lbs, the Portable Field is significantly lighter than the original field
GPS Field code printed directly onto the wall extrusions to outfit your field with VEX GPS
Included carrying cases to transport the Field Perimeter and Tiles (still sold separately)
No need to worry for you Event Partners, as the original Field Perimeter will continue to be available for purchase. And just like with the introduction of Anti-Static Field Tiles, there will be no requirement to use the Portable Competition Field at your local competitions for the foreseeable future.
The Portable Field is available for pre-order now at the link above. Barring any setbacks (we all know how overloaded shipping ports are right now), we expect our US orders to start shipping in Mid-Late January, with international orders soon after.
One other thing that I’d like to note now, there is a chance that the Portable Field Perimeter will be used on practice / skills / division / dome fields at the VEX Robotics World Championships, so teams should prepare for this possibility. We will of course provide you all with an update when we know more.
Don’t be alarmed, all of our testing has shown little to no difference in robot or field performance between the Portable Field Perimeter, and its predecessor. I just wanted to give you all a proper notice now, because otherwise we all know that someone will have their “perfect” Autonomous fail at Worlds, and immediately blame the field.
As always, if you have any questions, please contact our Customer Service team at [email protected] or by phone at 903-453-0802.
I’ll be interested to see the strength of these fields, powerful v5 robots ramming into the current ones often causes them to flex around and scoot off of the tiles which they’re on. The lighter weight and easy assembly of these look promising though.
Ah, memories. Painfully disassembling an entire Turning Point field and then painstakingly recreating it in a garage so that we could practice throughout break.
From the assembly animation, it looks like there are straps connecting the two sets of parallel walls under the foam tiles to prevent them from bowing out (similar to the AndyMark FTC perimeter).
After watching the animation a couple more times, I have some more questions:
It doesn’t look like the existing field perimeter rubber feet will fit on the portable perimeter – as such, how does the portable perimeter interface with the floor? Or does it just sit on top of the tabs of the foam tiles?
Do the existing driver station posts (that ship with the metal/lexan perimeter) clamp to the new field perimeter? If not, is there a recommended solution for mounting driver interfaces on non-elevated portable fields?
The base rail parts 276-7596-313, 276-7596-314, 276-7596-315 don’t appear to have any holes nor appropriate wall thickness for securing to the field riser platforms used at World Championships. One would assume they’d have to be secured so please shed some light on how if you actually do decide to use them.
To answer a couple of the questions above. The CAD seems to show that there are mount holes in all the same places found on the V1 field. Also, the way the extrusion is for the bottom rails, it does not appear that the existing drive station towers will fit.
Hopefully VEX will come out with a drive station mount for elevated fields for this one, rather than me taking pictures at worlds and coming back and duplicating something similar. So many events are on elevated fields these days it would just make sense.
Whoa what is this thing I have never seen it before, nope absolutely not ever