[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Katy

From a spectator perspective they make the robots look more uniform. This I do not believe is a positive aspect because it makes it harder to tell simple box-like robots apart.

Bumpers come in a variety of colors, and many teams put their required team numbers on their bumpers. The difference in bumper color helps tell robots apart, and having the team number in a uniform easy to see place helps as well.

Originally Posted by Katy

Bumpers do not improve design and gameplay. The 2/3rds covered rule means that generally objects can only be taken in from one side of the robot. This severely limits the design constraints and also forces the robots to become far more uniform.

Having a bumper over your frame didn't limit intake of this years game piece, or at the very least, shouldn't have. We lifted our ball over our bumper in the process of collecting. If they keep this rule in the future, and we move to smaller gamepieces, then teams will have to be more innovative in their design should they decide to collect over their bumpered sides.

Additionally, FIRST didn't limit frame design. By and large most robots you see look pretty darn similar, typically a box about an inch under the width and length limits. And, if teams want to build different frame designs, there is nothing stopping them. See 148's frame this year for example. I think what you're getting at though is frames with indents for ball collection, and while I can't remember seeing any this year, I'm sure there are some, but it also means that people found ways around it, or decided it wasn't necessary.

Originally Posted by Katy

Bumpers in practice do not prevent damage to robots. If for no other reason these bumpers add an additional 15 pounds of mass to the robot that now will ram full speed into other surfaces. Additionally, the bumpers appear to be giving a false sense of security to the drivers. After attending regionals (both in person and via webcast) it appears that drivers are driving more aggressively because they believe that bumpers will protect them and the field components. I know a team whose kitbot chassis was snapped by one of these aggressive drivers through both sets of bumpers. That is an incredible amount of force.

Is there a picture of said KitBot? What do you mean by "snapped in half"? I'm willing to bet the team did not properly support it. Going from personal experience (yes, it's a fallacy, I know) bumpers do prevent damage. In 2006 three sides of our robot had bumpers, the forth was left open for ball collecting. We never had any problems with the other three sides but we had to replace the front rail 3 times! And each time it got stronger. To be fair, we started out with diamond plate, but we ended up with 1.5" C channel, supported with some 1" flat bar. It was not an essential frame component, but we knew it could be bent in, so we purposefully tried to avoid hitting anyone with it. And it still took a terrible beating.

Originally Posted by Katy

Damage situations to the field appear even worse because while other robots may have bumpers on them, the field components do not. This means that drivers can now ram rather hard into field walls without fearing damage to their robot but that the field walls may still sustain damage. Padding the walls would add weight that must be shipped from regional to regional, setup and takedown time and complexity, and make the overfall field far more expensive. I do not believe that is the solution to this problem.

I've never worked on the field, but from the drive team's perspective the only typical damage to the field is to the carpet. I can see the point of bumpers making driver's drive more aggressively, but the carpet always gets ripped up. Was there more field damage at your regional?

Originally Posted by Katy

Mandatory bumpers do not assist with preventing tipping.

In terms of physics mandatory bumpers should assist with intentional tipping a little bit but this is in reality a disservice to the students. The reason bumpers help is not because they prevent wedged-shaped robots particularly effectively. True wedged-shaped robots are few and far between. When was the last time you saw a robot that tipped another robot by getting under it? Instead most tipping happens by hitting a robot hard when it is most sensitive to a hit, for example while turning, reaching up high or descending a slope. Instead the additional fifteen pounds of mass is lowering the center of gravity of the robots and making them physically harder to tip. This is a disservice to the students because it is watering down one of the fundamental engineering challenges of building a good robot. Giving the students a false sense of a "rule of thumb" of "will that work" for center of gravity will only hurt them later and damage their ability to build future real-life solutions to complex problems.

Additionally, despite the physics, there is the fact that despite the extra fifteen pounds of mass to help out the CG a tremendous number of robots still wind up on their sides by the end of the match. This is probably because drivers are driving more aggressively and hitting harder.

Robots have tipped since the beginning. Robots will continue to tip. Bumpers don't really help much in this regard, but they weren't meant to. Because of the simple fact they are an extra 15 pounds on the bottom, they will help a little, as you say, but smart teams will build this into their CoG calculations, no rely exclusively on them to counter balance a 50 pound grabber 10 feet in the air. Additionally, you shouldn't have seen any wedge shaped robots on the field. They have been illegal since 2006. And, if 15 pounds of bumper weight is a disservice to learning about engineering, should we require teams to mount their battery 2 feet off the ground? No! That'd be silly. The 15 pound bumpers are just another requirement of the design, which is a real world constraint.

Originally Posted by Katy

Bumpers are an additional hassle to running a regional. Having bumpers adds time to the robot inspection process. This would be easier if they did not have to be weighed separately because then the problem could be solved with more volunteer inspectors. Instead, since there is generally only one scale at a regional it puts additional weight in what is already a bottleneck in the robot inspection process.

I think they are much more of a hassle to the team than the inspectors. It's pretty easy to hop a set of bumpers on the scale between robots, and then all the inspectors need to do is say "Yup, under 15 pounds." Weighing and sizing with them on would definitely be a work saver for the team however. But the benefits they provide on the field outweigh this inconvenience on Thursday.