Bumpers

[Mineboy2300]

Watching the game animation many times to get the intricacies of the game, our team noticed that the robots all have bumpers, despite the fact that 30 seconds earlier he said that bumpers are no longer necessary. Just thought it was a funny inconsistency.

[Chexposito]

While bumpers are not "required", many teams will likely make something similar past bumpers for their own protection in an hectic environment.

[AndyBare]

Yes, every year there is bot-bot contact on an alliance. No defensive contact is not a great reason to totally eliminate shock absorption.

[excel2474]

Check out these for a bumper alternative. They're pretty lightweight and they shouldn't interfere with game piece manipulation.

http://www.robopromo.net/product_p/rp_llpb.htm

[cmrnpizzo14]

Check out these for a bumper alternative. They're pretty lightweight and they shouldn't interfere with game piece manipulation.

http://www.robopromo.net/product_p/rp_llpb.htm

I think that something like this would be good to have. The weight of having some sort of foam or other shock absorber around the robot is pretty negligible without the rigid wood framing that were required for bumpers. I think that teams could make some pretty sweet looking, lightweight, vanity bumpers this year. Definitely encouraging my team to try this!

[KMeyers]

I'm pretty sure Gladiator Robotics will end up just taping/strapping pool noodles to the edge of our robot, which would give the same protection as the old bumpers but without the headache of putting on the covers.

[Thad House]

Mentors on my team keep going "Back in my day..." Whenever not having bumpers gets brought up. Teams ran without bumpers for years without them, so anyone with mentors from back then will know how strong you have to build your bot to not have bumpers. Its not too difficult to make your robot strong enough to withstand impacts, especially with WCD style bots.

[Kevin Ray]

I think that there's a real drawback to using the traditional bumpers this year in that they are subject to the size constraint of R3 and weight constraint of R4. Granted, you can just slap them on once on the field to essentially nullify the R3 concern, but the weight can really eat into your weight allowance.

[SoftwareBug2.0]

While bumpers are not "required", many teams will likely make something similar past bumpers for their own protection in an hectic environment.

Why do you think they will do so?

[Foster]

There is lots of things to run into. Totes, other robots, the field perimeter, etc. $6 of pool noodles may make those inadvertent crashes irrelevant.

Or not.

They don't need to be the bumpers from daze gone by, but a little smush will do you