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Originally Posted by BurningQuestion
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..
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While your concept is worrect, I find it hard to believe that bumpers slow a robot down at all at impact. Unlike braking a car, bumpers are like putting a big, well...bumper, in front of the car. The bumpers are really to protect the frame of the robot from damage, not to make less force.
In fact, bumpers will actually increase force, as they add more mass (15 pounds) to the robot. Comparing a 120 lb robot to a 135 lb robot, the 135 lb robot has 12.5% more mass, and thus 12.5% more force. Even if bumpers did make accelleration slower, the added inertia of the 135 lb robot would cancel this out.
I encourage every robot to put bumpers on if they can, because without them, more penalties will be called on you, and your robot will get more damaged.