I would like to see this years game played without bumpers. Then tell me that they don't prevent damage. I would rather wait 5 extra minutes during the inspection process and add 15 pounds, than have to do serious repairs after every single match.

You talked about the kitbot chassis being snapped in half even with bumpers. Imagine the damage to both robots had there not been bumpers. Even if bumpers were ruled as no longer mandatory, I would force our team to use them because I don't want my mechanical guys working their butts off after a simple practice match.

The bumpers do not have to make the robots look uniform, and they don't. If you look above the bumpers, robots are vastly different and can take many different shapes and forms. On our robot this year, we only covered the corners of the robot, while still covering 2/3rds of the robot. Our bot looks different than any other robot out there, and the bumpers help to make it stand out. All bumpers don't have to be the same color, and we used that to our advantage.