Are the mandatory bumpers helping or hurting?

[technoL]

Originally Posted by Nawaid Ladak

I saw 108's hybrid and it was DESIGNED to go stright and stop just short of their opponiants driver station, i've seen it hit the drivers statin... so here is my question. if 108 didn't have bumpers, do you think they might have programmed their hybrid diffrently?

I'd like to clarify two things here. I just watched Qualification Match 62 (the only match we had with SPAM) a few times and I didn't see us ram into them at all. Perhaps it was another alliance partner, another match?

Also, our hybrid was designed to turn when the robocoach signaled it to, not just to stop in front of the opponent's driver station. We were having horrible issues with IR on Friday, so that's what resulted in all of the crashes, though by Saturday we got most of the kinks worked out and didn't crash into the operator wall at all. As far as bumpers are concerned, the major point of contact in collisions during hybrid were with our arm, and since we don't have bumpers on the front, they wouldn't have had any effect on how our hybrid mode was executed.

For bumpers in general, I like them. It makes it easier to play defense without completely murdering other robots, and serves as great protection for the frame. In 2007 we didn't have bumpers at all and by our second regional our frame was bent significantly. This year, now that we're done with our second regional, the damages are nowhere near as great to the base. I've also seen many tipping situations prevented because of bumpers. Also, bumpers are not only to protect the robots, but the field also. On Thursday during practice a team went out on the field several times without bumpers and there were significant scratches and movement of structural field pieces due to this robot's lack of bumpers. As long as the game requires a significant amount of high speed and defense, I'd like to keep the bumpers around. Perhaps I'm a softie, but I hate seeing robots get damaged.