[Steve Kaneb]

Team 190 chose not to use bumpers, and this turned out to be very advantageous. At the BAE regional, we were consistently able to maneuver around robots and through holes in defensive fronts. During our defensive period, we were often blocking 2 robots, and often kept these periods scoreless. This would not have been possible with bumpers because we relied on short, sharp shocks to robots to get them out of alignment. Despite the 15 pounds of stability advantage that bumpers afford, we never tipped and were frequently pushing bumpered robots around with ease.

Aside from that, we were thankful for not having bumpers because we often needed to check our chains on the driveline, our wheels and our spacers to make sure that it was all in order. Not having bumpers was also really helpful in the pits, because there wasn't extra room, and we keep most of our systems at bumper level.

Important items pertaining to our disuse of bumpers:
Almost all of our weight is wheel level. We're about 2-4 lbs. underweight, with a 6-wheel, one speed driveline.

Matching up against and with robots using bumpers, we noticed that there was a lot of trouble with the ramp and with defense. While the bumpers protected against collision effects, they got in the way of blocking, and often forced robots into misalignment.