As the tittle says, what is the purpose of those little orange jumpers? Are they important in the build/programming of a robot?
They’re like a “permanently pressed” bumper or limit switch. They’re mainly used for the programming of the robot, sometimes as an autonomous selector.
They are not essential but they can be useful. In past years where on-the-field interaction with your robot was illegal, they could be put in the microcontroller beforehand as a digital in to determine presets such as color or field tile
The VEX Cortex Microcontroller includes a few pieces of default code which can be accessed by plugging a jumper into a specific port. This allows for some configuration by the user without needing to program anything.
See this guide (page 6 of 14):
-John