Problematic

We are having a very hard time making the bumper system work. I spent about an hour and a half working on a system which we then completely discarded. This is a rather common occurrence; one of us has a brilliant idea which turns out to completely suck. This time it was my turn. I built a compound dual-track and carriage system, designed to split the bumper into three interlocking levered sections. Will, meanwhile, built a rather robust sensor mounting block which we are currently incorporating into the existing sprung bumper. However, we are inherently unsatisfied with this bumper; there are too many problems with torque where there shouldn’t be torque and no torque where there should be torque. As I write, Will is assembling the touch bumper from the Mindstorms 2.0 catalog. It’s unlikely that this exact design will work on our car, as it’s far too small, but we are hoping to learn something and get some ideas from it.