Bumpers

Bumpers protect your robot from damage on the field! It's important to build a robust and easily repairable set of bumpers each season.

With the announcement of the 2025 FIRST® Robotics Competition Bumper Rule Changes allowing for an increased variety of legal bumper materials. AndyMark has tested a number of different bumper and backer configurations in order to give our best recommendation to the community for the 2025 FRC season. This is just a recommendation on one configuration - you may want to test and adapt this design based on the needs of your team.

The test results indicate 2.5” diameter solid noodles (density 2 lb/cu ft) with an EVA tile (density 2.8 lb/cu ft) and plywood backer material provide the best impact dissipation of any accessible material to teams. The diagram below shows a cross-section of these materials.

For a 32.3” by 27.0” chassis, we used eight am-5580 noodles and five am-2499 soft tiles.

EVA foam floor tiles provide a great harder layer between noodles and the force of impact. The pre-release rules do not indicate if multi-material foams will be allowed, so we recommend positioning the EVA foam as part of the “hard parts” backer.

Even if your team only has access to hollow noodles for the upcoming season, we recommend the addition of an EVA foam floor tile to your backer.