Quote Originally Posted by Roland
The purpose of the hinges is so that you can't get underneath, so that would never happen anyway.
You can't say never when fighting in the arena. Things will happen in there that you either won't expect or won't have accounted for.

My personal opinion is that skirts/hinges are pretty redundant in robot combat today. The only floor they'd most likely be suited to is the Robo Challenge floor; having the heavyweights being flipped and bouncing all over the RR and RL floors means there are usually a few lips and bumps for the feathers to negotiate and these can be prime areas for skirts and hinges to get snagged/stuck/jammed upon.

If you're going to be flipped, you're going to be flipped. A ground-skimming flipper blade with the entire force of the robot and bungees holding it down is most likely going to get under a ground-skimming skirt with just the weight of the hinges/skirt material holding it down. I prefer to leave a reasonable amount of ground clearance (5mm-8mm) and make sure that the robot is invertible or can self-right. That way you are less likely to get stuck on the floor of any of the arenas, yet can still keep fighting when flipped.

Just my two centimos anyway