[Jaine Perotti]

I was thinking about this the other day coming from a physics perspective.

One of the most important and fundamental equations in physics is F = ma (Force equals mass times acceleration). Now think about this equation while imagining an impact between two robots.

In a collision, a robot with bumpers will have a smaller acceleration upon impact than a robot without them. Because acceleration is the change in velocity divided by the change in time, the acceleration is small because a bumper gives the robot more time to stop. The smaller the acceleration, the smaller the resulting force. In the same way, there is smaller acceleration when a car comes to a gradual stop, as opposed to when a car crashes head on into a tree. There is more force exerted on the person in the car that crashes into the tree, than there is on the person who comes to a gradual stop.

The force imparted by a bumpered robot is smaller than a non-bumpered robot. This fact can be taken into account when deciding whether or not to use bumpers. If you are planning on being an offensive shooter-bot, the use of bumpers would help you because it would make the force of impacts smaller. This would make it harder for your opponents to knock you out of scoring position. However, if you are planning on playing defensively, bumpers might not be as advantageous because they will cushion the impact you will have when playing defense against another robot. They will reduce the force with which you strike.

My team's robot is primarily a defensive/corner goal scoring robot. We chose not to use bumpers this year. Because of F = ma, it appears that this was a good decision. If we had used bumpers, our impact against other robots would have been smaller.

Now the question is, would the weight advantage of the bumpers have overcome the loss of acceleration due to the padding?

-- Jaine