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Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery
Generally, base-to-base contact is not incredibly harmful, aside of maybe a wire coming unplugged, a couple bolts becoming loose (if not loc-tited etc) and that level of damage, even when it is a high speed collision from 10-15 feet away...
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that is the normal intuitive view of things, but if you work out the math, a robot going 10mph and hitting frame to frame can experience (and impart) over 1,000 gs of impact
having a few inches of foam between the frame drops the impact down to a few gs.
when frames hit metal to metal batteries can be broken loose, victors and robot controllers broken free from their mounts - you can even break printed circuit boards inside the control components. It all depends on how everything is attached to the frame that is accelerating at 1000 gs for a few mS.
a 130 lb robot going 10 mph has a LOT of kinetic energy*. That energy has to be absorbed by something, if not the bumpers, then the functional parts of your robot.
*edit: if I did the math correctly, it has the same momentum as a 5 pound sledge hammer travelling at 50mph!