Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Marandola
What about cordura on the front and back, and sailcloth or ballistic nylon on the sides? Best of both worlds.
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This is certainly possible, and something we considered (albeit very briefly) for this season. One issue is that the colors all the fabrics come in are quite different, so while you might get the desired functionality, the aesthetics of you bumper would arguably not be as good. We considered having higher friction material in the front of our robot to aid in ball pickup, but we tested our prototypes with lower friction material and it wasn't a problem.
Additionally, lower friction bumpers doesn't just help you get out of friction pins as the colloquial definition of a "friction pin" would dictate. Having a lower friction bumper material simply helps you avoid getting caught or slowed down on other robots and field elements, and this can be a benefit to not just avoiding pinning, but also to ensure better mobility around the field. As such, having lower friction bumpers on all sides of your robot.
To explain our reasoning, we realized that having ballistic nylon could limit our ability to pin other robots, but we felt that our defensive abilities were not limited to just pinning people. Our driver(s) and our drivetrains are far more versatile than that, and we have other defensive play in our playbook. Therefore, and costs were outweighed by the large benefits. This year, we still think we were able to play effective defense, and we didn't feel we were hurt by having lower friction bumpers.