Battlebots IQ 2006! *picture intensive*

[slade]

meh, i might as well post this already.

the tournament starts on the 26th. I redesigned the bot I had made last year with quite a few improvements over the previous designs. last year I came up with the concept and arm system and worked mainly on the arm and pneumatic system. Raytheon sponsors us and last year few of their engineers came to the competition in orlando and saw the damage our bot took due to its aluminum construction, so this year they made arrangements to get titanium for us. i redesigned the drive system and structure, and after having my whole team either graduate or spend their time on other things, i pretty much built the entire bot myself (except for the titanium, which was sent to remmele engineering). at one point some jerk broke into the room and stole the tank right out of the bot, so i had to talk to smart parts, who ended up sponsoring us and sending us a free 48/30 tank and reg (i miss the nice 45/45 carbon fiber tank :( ) oh, and we have to use smart parts regs due to the rules. everything was cut really close, the night before the ship date i stayed at school past midnight working. that day we had one blown servo, and the teams other bot had a broken motherboard, so i had to replace the servo, rewire and rebuild the bot for an older version backup motherboard, debug, and shave off about a pound of weight, since the older motherboard was significantly bigger. its finally shipped though, and ive completed the documentation, so im pretty much just waiting for the event.

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/8171/img01604xi.jpg
http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/2514/img01597cx.jpg
http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/1647/img01579lk.jpg

oh, did i mention i had to design the team shirts too?
http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/5388/2006lsroboticslogosmall1jx.jpg

i took a short video of my teammate katie test driving the bot (she felt guilty and actually decided to show up)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1504086396053802970


sponsors:

Raytheon
Methods Machine Tools
Remmele Engineering
Smart Parts

[skriptal]

I wish you luck. Also on the raytheon internal website they mentioned the raytheon sponsoring the robots teams at high schools for the FIRST robotics competition and the battle bots comp. Hope you do well and smash stuff.

[psychowarden]

Man, I loved Battlebots, and was bummerd majorly when Comedy Central stopped showing it. And that crappy Robot Arena they show on Spike and G4 is garbage compared to the original battlebots, that actually had traps that could really mess up the bots, like the hammer :D and the saw blades were pretty bad too. Man, I loved Vlad the Impaler, and Nightmare was a personal favorite of mine, but my alltime favorite was Ziggy (I think thats what it was called) A spinning lightwieght.

[wanna-b-ballin']

Man, I loved Battlebots, and was bummerd majorly when Comedy Central stopped showing it. And that crappy Robot Arena they show on Spike and G4 is garbage compared to the original battlebots, that actually had traps that could really mess up the bots, like the hammer :D and the saw blades were pretty bad too. Man, I loved Vlad the Impaler, and Nightmare was a personal favorite of mine, but my alltime favorite was Ziggy (I think thats what it was called) A spinning lightwieght.

ziggy was kickass. i dont think i ever saw it lose a match. maybe one? but damn, it sure was effective.

[psychowarden]

Ahh, my bad, it was Ziggo. I also like Gamma Raptor. Little bugger was fast as hell, nothing could catch it.

[slade]

I wish you luck. Also on the raytheon internal website they mentioned the raytheon sponsoring the robots teams at high schools for the FIRST robotics competition and the battle bots comp. Hope you do well and smash stuff.
hmm, i cant find anything mentioning battlebots on their website. then again, raytheon sponsors somewhere around 30 FIRST teams, and one battlebots team... which would be us.


Man, I loved Battlebots, and was bummerd majorly when Comedy Central stopped showing it. And that crappy Robot Arena they show on Spike and G4 is garbage compared to the original battlebots, that actually had traps that could really mess up the bots, like the hammer :D and the saw blades were pretty bad too. Man, I loved Vlad the Impaler, and Nightmare was a personal favorite of mine, but my alltime favorite was Ziggy (I think thats what it was called) A spinning lightwieght.
Battlebots IQ has hammers in the corners of the arena, but no saws. nightmare was actually at battlebots IQ two years ago (before i was on the team :( ) for a demonstration, they had it hit a steel drum, and it knocked the drum straight into the ceiling.


Ahh, my bad, it was Ziggo. I also like Gamma Raptor. Little bugger was fast as hell, nothing could catch it.
sometimes fast can be bad... i dont have any pictures of our team's other bot, but heres what it did to our floor during testing:

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/4216/img015232zn.jpg

when they first tested it out, they just TAPPED the controller lightly, and it burned rubber on the ground, SHOT across the room, and hit and dented a metal cabinet.

[beam]

I find it interesting that your bot's offensive weapon is the very one that would defeat it's own defenses.

That sliver of metal looks thin enough to get under your bot's chasis.

Are you showing someone how to defeat yourself? :)

[slade]

I find it interesting that your bot's offensive weapon is the very one that would defeat it's own defenses.

That sliver of metal looks thin enough to get under your bot's chasis.

Are you showing someone how to defeat yourself? :)
its not a chassis, its a skirt. this is the frame:

http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/3479/img015422up.th.jpg (http://img89.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img015422up.jpg)
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/7481/img015324bp.th.jpg (http://img89.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img015324bp.jpg)

the skirt is titanium and isnt fastened to the bot, its held on loosely with bolts and slides around. it touches the ground so there isnt much room for a flipper or wedge to get under, theres only a few points where theres a slight gap.

besides, last year our bot was the only one at the competition that was a competent flipper. none of the others really worked well at all, there was another poorly designed four bar system and a few flippers with one pivot point, none of which i ever saw actually flip anything. last year our bot had about 1/4 inch between the aluminum frame and the ground and it was never flipped, so unless someone came up with a great design since last year, i think ill be fine.

[MarkM]

Why the perspex top? Is that rules thing? As a hammer/spike is going to do you serious damage and quickly...or is the weight too much with a metal top?

[rkjunior303]

Mark -- It's actually Lexan -- which is quite strong, as long as it's not being sawed.

[slade]

Why the perspex top? Is that rules thing? As a hammer/spike is going to do you serious damage and quickly...or is the weight too much with a metal top?
theres a few reasons for that. first of all this is a pneumatic bot, and the rules require a clear view of the gauges, which is really only possible with a lexan top. secondly, weight. looking at my chart right now, the 1/4" lexan top has an estimated weight of 7 pounds, and is actually fairly strong. for about the same weight in steel, the top would have to be 1/32" thick, which wouldnt really provide great protection either. the strength/weight ratio of aluminum is about the same as that of steel, and, well, titanium is just expensive, and would have to be about 1/16" thick (which actually wouldnt be a bad choice, but it would still be expensive and not allow us to see the gauges). as you can see from the holes in the arm, weight was cut very close as it is, the night before shipping it weighed 120.5 pounds (because of the new motherboard and mounts), which i managed to shave down to 119.5 (which i have to say is quite an improvement over the year before i was on the team, when the bot arrived at the tournament 20 pounds overweight)

lexan is strong enough and with the supports around the arm shouldnt take any damage because of a hammer. i have yet to see a competent hammer/spike bot, there was one last year an all-girls team built which i helped with, and, well, it didnt really do too much.

[slade]

Mark -- It's actually Lexan -- which is quite strong, as long as it's not being sawed.
exactly, the only thing im afraid of is a wedge with sawblades that could possibly get under the skirt and hit the bottom lexan... but if we can flip their bot, sawblades + a steel floor dont mix well.

[WenULiVeUdiE]

That puts my robot to shame.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y272/Wenuliveudie/2006RobotPSv1fordelphi.jpg

You get to destroy stuff and all. I have actually talked to some of my team members who would like to make a Battlebot outside of our club with our Johnson and Johnson engineers and machinists. Looks like an awesome time. So much destruction....I love it! Is there any monetary limit? I hope not...


the night before the ship date i stayed at school past midnight working.

Hehe, you need to join a FIRST team. That's nothing for us. Wait until you start sleeping at a warehouse for 4 days straight to get a robot finished. Now that's fun...


/shameless plug
//good discussion about Robotics

[slade]

That puts my robot to shame.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y272/Wenuliveudie/2006RobotPSv1fordelphi.jpg

You get to destroy stuff and all. I have actually talked to some of my team members who would like to make a Battlebot outside of our club with our Johnson and Johnson engineers and machinists. Looks like an awesome time. So much destruction....I love it! Is there any monetary limit? I hope not...



Hehe, you need to join a FIRST team. That's nothing for us. Wait until you start sleeping at a warehouse for 4 days straight to get a robot finished. Now that's fun...


/shameless plug
//good discussion about Robotics
thatd be cool if you did get into battlebots :) itd be nice to see you at a tournament sometime. next year, maybe? :p would you be doing battlebots or battlebots IQ (highschool and college)?

yeah, there is a monetary limit. the limit is the ammount of cash that you can round up from sponsors. technically you could go over that but i wouldnt really recommend it ;)

my school did first a while ago, but we dont have the cash for it. its $6000 to enter, and this year we had $7000 total. if we factor in team shirts, shipping costs, repairs, etc. we'd go over budget. I have about *looks at spreadsheet* $2,148.97 invested in this one bot out of the team budget (many parts were reused from last year and raytheon/remmele paid for the titanium) the other bot only cost us a few hundred dollars in steel since almost everything was reused from last year, and the rest went to our other team expenses.

does it count that the previous night i was at school until 11 PM, went to sleep when i got home, woke up at 3 AM to write a philosophy essay, went to school, took a nap in a shipping crate, and then worked until midnight? i would have slept at school a few times but i wasnt really allowed to, and we arent cool enough to have a warehouse :(.

i actually almost cut my classes for the whole day to work, but i realized i didnt need to.

[sniper1rfa]

Good luck slade - wish i could see things go down. This will be the first time i havent had some sort of robotics competition since i was seven

The nightmare demonstration was very cool. It is amazing how huge the disk is.

Er, well... Kick some ***. Pound falcon to a nasty mess on the floor. If not in the box, than out of it on your own time when nobody is looking.



oh... edit. FIRST would be way cooler if there werent limitations. It doesnt test you as much - just how fast you can slap together something that works.

[slade]

Good luck slade - wish i could see things go down. This will be the first time i havent had some sort of robotics competition since i was seven

The nightmare demonstration was very cool. It is amazing how huge the disk is.

Er, well... Kick some ***. Pound falcon to a nasty mess on the floor. If not in the box, than out of it on your own time when nobody is looking.
i thought if a bot wins two years in a row it cant be registered again? oh well, im sure team whyach... err, falcon will come up with a new bot. and sure, ill knock it into the floor for you ;)

[WenULiVeUdiE]

thatd be cool if you did get into battlebots :) itd be nice to see you at a tournament sometime. next year, maybe? :p would you be doing battlebots or battlebots IQ (highschool and college)?

yeah, there is a monetary limit. the limit is the ammount of cash that you can round up from sponsors. technically you could go over that but i wouldnt really recommend it ;)

my school did first a while ago, but we dont have the cash for it. its $6000 to enter, and this year we had $7000 total. if we factor in team shirts, shipping costs, repairs, etc. we'd go over budget. I have about *looks at spreadsheet* $2,148.97 invested in this one bot out of the team budget (many parts were reused from last year and raytheon/remmele paid for the titanium) the other bot only cost us a few hundred dollars in steel since almost everything was reused from last year, and the rest went to our other team expenses.

does it count that the previous night i was at school until 11 PM, went to sleep when i got home, woke up at 3 AM to write a philosophy essay, went to school, took a nap in a shipping crate, and then worked until midnight? i would have slept at school a few times but i wasnt really allowed to, and we arent cool enough to have a warehouse :(..


Yeah, I'd say that's close enough. ;)

That's cheaper than I thought. Hell, J&J spent close to $100,000 this season when every possible aspect is included. For the actual robot, without labor, $15,000?

I am definately going to speak with a few of the engineers and machinists and see what they think. This would be an awesome summer project. We're a high school team, so just Battlebots I guess? I really have no idea about the league.

FIRST isnt as much about being cool as it is about teaching students. Sure, if there were little to no limitations I could have a pneumatic shooting robot. But that's not much a challenge. Instead, with all of these limitations we are forced to be engineers and come up with valid designs in an insanely short period of time.

Slade, did you attend the Boston FIRST Regional? I remember you said you may take a trip to it with your team.

[sniper1rfa]

I disagree - i don't think you learn as much in FIRST, which is why i don't like it as much. I was looking at it from that standpoint, not how much i enjoyed competing. I like building any robot. :P


See, the thing about first (or was, anyway, don't know about now) was that you were GIVEN a lot of the stuff (you have to buy a kit, right?), and so got no choice in parts selection or anything. In BBIQ, you buy everything yourself. You get more interaction with suppliers, you get more control over what parts fit your application and budget, and just generally have to do more to do. It has more real-world design elements, IMO. Thats why we swiched away from FIRST. Hell, thats why we got the ball rolling to form BBIQ. The only limitations in BBIQ are the controllers (for safety reasons). And you still gotta program the thing. The only thing i like more about FIRST is the time limit - it does teach you about deadlines.

Making a battlebot is by no means easy. At all. Don't even think it. Making a robot that does something is easy (like our spoof robot code-named Full on Robot Chubby), however making something that is at all competitive is very very hard.

[slade]

I am definately going to speak with a few of the engineers and machinists and see what they think. This would be an awesome summer project. We're a high school team, so just Battlebots I guess? I really have no idea about the league.
youd probably want to be in battlebots IQ, which for me is next week. battlebots isnt a school thing, its the version thats been aired on TV.

our bot didnt cost all that much because the electronics and pneumatics were reused and we got so much from methods, raytheon and remmele. we just had to pay for the steel stock and a bunch of other small things.

[WenULiVeUdiE]

I disagree - i don't think you learn as much in FIRST, which is why i don't like it as much. I was looking at it from that standpoint, not how much i enjoyed competing. I like building any robot. :P


See, the thing about first (or was, anyway, don't know about now) was that you were GIVEN a lot of the stuff (you have to buy a kit, right?), and so got no choice in parts selection or anything. In BBIQ, you buy everything yourself. You get more interaction with suppliers, you get more control over what parts fit your application and budget, and just generally have to do more to do. It has more real-world design elements, IMO. Thats why we swiched away from FIRST. Hell, thats why we got the ball rolling to form BBIQ. The only limitations in BBIQ are the controllers (for safety reasons). And you still gotta program the thing. The only thing i like more about FIRST is the time limit - it does teach you about time limits.

Making a battlebot is by no means easy. At all. Don't even think it. Making a robot that does something is easy (like our spoof robot code-named Full on Robot Chubby), however making something that is at all competitive is very very hard.

When we are given the kit of parts, we are limited to using the included motors as well as limitations on pneumatics. By doing so, we are able to design a machine under restrictions that real engineers may face. It also makes it easier for FIRST to regulate robots, safety, etc. However, I do understand your point. And I guess I can not form a proper opinion on this until I try out BBIQ.

As far as it being competitive- I somewhat disagree. The way my team works is in a way that captures competitiveness and allows it to thrive. Sure, we love to build the robot. But we also love the competition: its positives and negatives. Also, on my team building the robot is, with the aforementioned limitations, quite a difficult task. Now I do not mean to debate which league is better or anything of that sort, as that would just be silly. So I will stop where I am so I do not take it too far...or something.

As far as the part kits go- We are limited on what motors we may use as well as limitations in pneumatics. Other than that, it is what ever you please. We are currently designing a custom transmission as well as drive train that includes driveshafts. Quite frankly, we hate the parts kits, as well. It also really helps with the 6 week deadline. Without the kit, most teams would be dead i nthe water.

Again, I am not trying to get into a debate. That's not fun, just silly.

[slade]

When we are given the kit of parts, we are limited to using the included motors as well as limitations on pneumatics. By doing so, we are able to design a machine under restrictions that real engineers may face. It also makes it easier for FIRST to regulate robots, safety, etc. However, I do understand your point. And I guess I can not form a proper opinion on this until I try out BBIQ.

As far as it being competitive- I somewhat disagree. The way my team works is in a way that captures competitiveness and allows it to thrive. Sure, we love to build the robot. But we also love the competition: its positives and negatives. Also, on my team building the robot is, with the aforementioned limitations, quite a difficult task. Now I do not mean to debate which league is better or anything of that sort, as that would just be silly. So I will stop where I am so I do not take it too far...or something.

As far as the part kits go- We are limited on what motors we may use as well as limitations in pneumatics. Other than that, it is what ever you please. We are currently designing a custom transmission as well as drive train that includes driveshafts. Quite frankly, we hate the parts kits, as well. It also really helps with the 6 week deadline. Without the kit, most teams would be dead i nthe water.

Again, I am not trying to get into a debate. That's not fun, just silly.
well, im at least glad that youre civil and rational about everything, and open minded. a girl im friends with was interested in starting a robotics club at her school so she talked to a girl about both FIRST and BBIQ, and the girl essentially said everyone in FIRST hates battlebots, and she said FIRST is "the real thing". i just laughed. neither FIRST nor BBIQ is "the real thing", its a robotics competition, thats all. as both of you have shown there are positive and negative aspects of both, and neither is necessarily better. battlebots is more open ended and less time restricted, whereas FIRST has parts kits but varying goals and more restricted time. you really need what both teaches, and if you want to argue which prepares you better for engineering, then you should just quit both and (gasp) go straight to a job in engineering. just do whichever you like and whichever you can. i sort of have to do battlebots, first because of the money issue but also because, well, i dont exactly have much of a team. battlebots has the same challenge every year (albeit, with many ways to approach it) so i have plenty of time to think and plan things out so ill be able to make the bot myself in time for the competition. if i was in first, well, id be pretty much screwed when my team abandons me, the time limit is a bit too much for one person, a few engineers and occasional help.

theres no point in criticizing either FIRST or BBIQ (although FIRST vex is fair game, and ridicule of it should even be encouraged)

[WenULiVeUdiE]

well, im at least glad that youre civil and rational about everything, and open minded. a girl im friends with was interested in starting a robotics club at her school so she talked to a girl about both FIRST and BBIQ, and the girl essentially said everyone in FIRST hates battlebots, and she said FIRST is "the real thing". i just laughed.

Thank you.

I'm laughing with you. We all love Battlebots! We are so damn jealous of you guys. In order to get out fair share of violence we need ro rag on the lower, more annoying members. ;)

Both programs are awesome in their own aspects. Both encourage engineering, albeit they go about in some what different ways. I say just build a robot and get on with life!

[sniper1rfa]

You should have played FIRST with us way back in the day.

why?

Flipping was legal. :clap:

Its not first vex that is lame... its LEGO FIRST robotics. LEGOs are really fun to play with. Lego mindstorms are super lame. :P

[slade]

You should have played FIRST with us way back in the day.

why?

Flipping was legal. :clap:

Its not first vex that is lame... its LEGO FIRST robotics. LEGOs are really fun to play with. Lego mindstorms are super lame. :P
hah, yeah, thats another thing, whats up with not being able to sabotage other teams? :p wheres the fun in that?

agreed on mindstorms :( i had a class in "robotics programming" which was based entirely on mindstorms. waaaaay too easy and rather mind numbing. fortunately, once it ended last semester i dropped the course that was going to replace it and instead took an independent study in CNC machining :cool:

[slade]

okay, time for my update.

i got back from the competition monday morning at 2 am, got a few hours of sleep, and then had to go to school >.< now i finally have time to post this, as all my makeup work isnt important. who cares about grades, college and the SAT?

when i got to the competition, the first thing i noticed was... damn, there are girls here! not too common for a robotics competition. there were two all girls teams last year, but this year about half the teams were all girls. there were 13 teams just from an all girls catholic school in miami.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g197/slade6061/IMG_0315.jpg

the competition didnt go nearly as well as it should have. there were far too many electronics issues (the IFI isaac 16 motherboard sucked) and the organization wasnt great. first of all, i have a pneumatic bot, and they had this rule where i have to get an orange sticker put on the tank specifying the max fill pressure with an authorized signature. so i had to run around finding the person to do that, and guess what? he just checked to make sure the label said "3000 PSI", which all paintball tanks can hold. he didnt even check the hydro date on the tank.

after we passed the safety inspection and the functional testing, we asked if we could get some time to test the bot and then charge the batteries before the competition started. they said sure, no problem, put your bot name and pit number down on the list, and we'll come to your staging area to get you. so we waited the rest of the day, which was all testing, they didnt get us, they said we could test the next day. our team's other bot used the chargers overnight. the next day they finished testing. we looked at the schedules they posted up and they said we were the 11th match of the day. they still didnt get us. then we hear theyre starting the competition, and then we hear them call our bot to go up to the arena... what?? i run over and ask someone whats going on, they say we're now listed as the second match. i ask them what the heck happened to giving us time to test and charge batteries, and she just said "well, you have 2 postponements for the tournament... you can use one if you want". okay, screw it, i ask to use one. they say we still dont have time to test the bot so we can only charge the batteries. we hook everything up and go back, they say they didnt postpone our match, they just switched us with another bot thats going round 3. so we got postponed only one match, and they switched the bot we're going against? it says in the rules that if you postpone you just postpone the match, not switch the bots around. whatever, forget it. so we get a wonderful 10 minutes of charging time, put the bot back together, and go back to the arena, to find out that dark angel, the bot we are now going against, wants to postpone. a little while ago they shorted out their batteries and their whole bot went up in smoke. so we finished charging the batteries, then sat around for a day again with nothing to do, and we had to have our match the following morning. on the plus side, i had plenty of time to go around taking pictures. the link is at the bottom of this post.

when we finally went, we won the match without too much of an issue. they had to solder 4 battery packs together and charge them. only two of the battery packs were working and they had half a charge. their spinner wasnt working so they could only drive. we flipped them 3 times (since they could drive upside down) and eventually the connection to their batteries came loose so we won. our IFI had a few issues and occasionally the bot wouldnt respond well, but besides that it was fine.

a little while after the match two of the girls came over to me and gave me two boxes of brownies. they said thanks for delaying the match for them. ?... oh well, score. dark angel = awesome.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g197/slade6061/IMG_0289.jpg

since we went the second day instead of the first, our next match came up quickly. we really only had time to charge our batteries. we went up against a hydrolic claw bot, called nipper. we ended up flipping them and they couldnt do anything upside down, so we won. however our bot had HORRIBLE control. the IFI had issues, it kept resetting during the match so we really couldnt do much. one time it turned off when we were under one of our own hammer, and we had to hit our bot with our own hammer to turn it back on... and it actually worked. score.

after the match we found out that, well, the IFI was messed up. if we hit the bot, even tapped the skirt, the IFI would reset. which means we would loose control for about 3 seconds. also, there was about a 2 second delay between pressing the button and the arm firing... not good. we moved the IFI to make sure it wasnt recieving interference from the motors, servos or wires, and then went through all the connections, soldering, crimping, and loctiting everything possible to make sure there wasnt anything loose.

next day, next match. spinal tap. great. theyre a good bot with a great (experienced) driver, and essentially 120 pounds all in 4 motors and wheels, with a steel frame. they just push the other bot around. we figured we'd be okay with the skirt, and, well, we were right. i was driving and the bot actually responded fine. i flipped them once, then used the arm to clamp their bot down. they got us to the hammer once which broke a bolt on the skirt, dented our arm, and dented the lexan, but besides that we appeared to be fine. i then drove them to a hammer which knocked out their electronics, so we won.

i had to saw and re-weld the arm since it was damaged from the hammer, and switch out the bolt on the skirt. between that and filling the tank and charging the batteries, we didnt have too much time. we still had a bit of time to spare, and we were going up against a mediocre wedge so we didnt have much to worry about. when we got to the arena they asked for a postponement since they messed something or other up, and we granted it. we took the top off, refilled the tank, etc (you have to purge it every time you leave the arena, the rules are far too strict) and waited around for a bit until they were ready. we were the last match of the day. when we got to the arena, we found out that we couldnt drive well. great. i went in and checked everything, and aparently our skirt was slightly bent from the match with spinal tap, and now the bolts were touching it. i couldnt ask for a postponement because we had just postponed the match for the other team. i got a wrench and loosened the bolts to allow the skirt some more movement, and it responded a bit better... the match started. the bot didnt really move. it moved a bit, but kept getting stuck. eventually it got completely stuck without the other bot even doing anything, and they won through default. i wasnt too happy.

the next day we had the first match of the day, so we had to wake up at 5:30 to get there in time to do repairs before it. we looked the bot over and found out that one of the servos was disabled, a cable loosened a bit from the match with spinal tap, just enough so that it still responded during the match and then lost the connection while we were transporting the bot, so the complete right half of the drive train wasnt working. on top of that, a set screw on the back left motor came off, and the key fell out... again, during transportation. so we had one wheel that was actually functional on the entire bot, the front left wheel. wonderful >.< i spent a while on repairs to get the bot functional for the match.

i took a look at the bot we were going up against... great. not good. they were a full bodied spinner that was low to the ground and fairly compact... and had a 40 pound, 1/2" thick titanium shell with 1" x 1/2" x 3" teeth. damn. they had 4 magmotors powering the spinner. according to them it spun with a linear velocity of 400 MPH and put out 150 horsepower. which, now that i think about it, seems a bit excessive considering each of the 4 motors puts out 3 horsepower, but whatever. its still 4 magmotors on a 40 pound spinner, falcon had only 2. the only way to beat them is to flip them, but hey, thats what our bot is designed to do, right?

after fixing everything, we tested the bot in the testing box. it drove fine. score. we loctited everything, charged the batteries, filled the tank, etc. we got to the arena, tested the bot, it was fine... the match started. the bot didnt really move. it moved forward, then stopped. damn IFI. i tried to turn, it turned, stopped. turned again. i got the bot over near them, tried to fire the arm... it didnt fire. they hit us, scraped up the skirt a bit. i tried to move the bot again, the IFI reset. tried to fire the arm, it didnt fire. they hit us again, broke a weld and bent part of the skirt. since our bot was still (sort of) moving they just kept hitting us over and over... it didnt really go well. if i could just get one flip off we would beat them, but it just wouldnt work. some times the arm wouldnt fire, sometimes there would be a 3 second delay. eventually i just tapped out, at the point where i was afraid of the internals of the bot taking damage. they tore the titanium skirt apart. if the bot was actually working, we could have had a chance at winning...

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g197/slade6061/IMG_0324.jpg

after the match, my advisor and teammates did a bit of research and found out that the other team wasnt really legitimate. to enter the competition you have to be associated with a school, you have to be a school team. every team member has to go to the same school and school organized club/class. aparently, the team was a guy who built robots professionally in his own machine shop, his son, and his sons friends. the school they entered as didnt have a robotics team and didnt even have a machine shop. also, the rules state that a spinner must spin down to a stop within 30 seconds, theirs took about a minute and a half... but whatever. they had a good bot, its better than losing to that damn wedge.

oh well, the competition was overall okay. last year we had a worse bot, but it had far less stupid issues. dark angel also had issues with the IFI, and a few other bots did too. next year we're switching to spektrum controllers, which will be much better. this year was the first year they got rid of the IFI requirements since IFI discontinued their motherboards (which we had to tell battlebots, after we called IFI and found that out... our motherboard was broken and we had to send it back twice, and it STILL didnt work right). they didnt change the requirements soon enough for us to really put much thought into changing, especially because i was really the only one working. the spektrum controllers are smaller, cheaper, lighter, and supposedly dont recieve any interferance from motors or wires, and are more shock resistant. they are supposed to never lose a signal and not reset... score.

as far as the bots, each year there are very few bots that i think are actually good. there were maybe 50 bots total in the large division.

the bots that impressed me last year:

greenwave. paul is awesome, he designed and built the entire thing himself. it took second place and got the well deserved award for best engineered. everything fit perfectly, it was low to the ground, compact, and effective.

falcon, of course (although it wasnt built by the kids)

alakran (college) - it was a pneumatic clamp and lifter bot, it would clamp the other bot, and then lift it/flip it over on top of itself, and drive around with it. so cool. it was great.

spiderbot - full bodied spinner, it was amazingly effective when it went against carnegie mellon, it threw carnegie 10 feet high and it bounced off two walls before hitting the ground. so awesome.

this year:

brutality (college). paul is still awesome. he made essentially the same bot as greenwave, but smaller and more compact. he used the spektrum motherboard, which was a great choice. he had one huge spinner motor, and the drive motors were just 4 dewalt drill motors. guess what? he took 1st place in the college division, and half the matches he didnt even turn his spinner on. he just used his bot as a wedge to push the other bot around, it was so amazingly effective.

accelerator 3 (the full bodied spinner that beat us) even though i question the involvement of the students. it was still a nice bot.

titanium knights, they had a wedge with two sawblades and a drum bot. they were nice and well made, with good control and good drivers, but nothing special.

there was one very nice drum minibot that was very effective, cant remember what it was.

the 4 mechanical engineers at raytheon were so certain when i was talking to them that 1/8" titanium would be fine and nearly indestructable for the competition. from what i heard, they were sitting slackjawed during our last match... hey, if 1/8" titanium and 1/2" titanium teeth meet at high velocities, the 1/2" wins.

oh, and nightmare was there as a demo bot, the guy who built it was a judge. he also had a mini 1 pound nightmare.

noteworthy matches:

brutality vs. lunatic

brutality is a horizontal blade spinner, lunatic is a nightmare knockoff. brutality is so low, and it just sideswiped lunatic and knocked it clear into the air and on its back. they had a second match eventually, and the same thing happened.

pneumagic vs. spinal tap

hey, our bot actually worked!

(insert bot name here) vs. icewave

icewave is last years college champion. they are a horizontal spinner like brutality, but they have a gas engine that sits above the blade, so theyre sorta top heavy. their blade got bent, they spun out of control, the blade hit the ground, and they did two full flips in the air, a few twists, and landed upside down. watching the slow motion replay was awesome.

press coverage:

dark angel was on the front page of the miami herald, and our team's other bot (the brick) was mentioned in the article. it was sort of funny, the writer didnt know anything about battlebots, and really felt the need to draw attention to the catholic schoolgirls. and in the airport on the way home i caught 30 seconds of a mini bot match on the news, although there may have been more.

oh yeah, a few notable random pictures:

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g197/slade6061/IMG_0288.jpg
smoke!

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g197/slade6061/IMG_0265.jpg
/porch!

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g197/slade6061/IMG_0297.jpg
team "pretty in pink" (yes, it was an all girls team) made these stickers to give out to the teams they beat. they never got a chance to give one out. i laughed. two years ago they couldnt get their bot working, and someone from my team had to help them fix it. the same happened this year. except for my team helping to fix it. they didnt pass inspection, and didnt have a single match.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g197/sla...61/IMG_0258.jpg
http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g197/sla...61/IMG_0237.jpg
titanium knights. they had 2 bots (in case you cant count)

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g197/slade6061/IMG_0214.jpg
that full bodied spinner did exceptionally well, even though its nothing special. hey, if you have 13 girls teams from one school, one has to do well, right?

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g197/slade6061/IMG_0319.jpg
internet phenomenon, anyone?

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g197/slade6061/IMG_0305.jpg
brutality

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g197/sla...61/IMG_0271.jpg
icewave

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g197/sla...61/IMG_0253.jpg
second place minibot... i dont have pics of the drum.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g197/sla...61/IMG_0247.jpg
nightmare

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g197/sla...61/IMG_0205.jpg
the only other decent flipper ive ever seen at battlebots. it was a 4 bar flipper like ours, except more compact, and it didnt have skirts (which probably would have helped it a lot)

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g197/sla...61/IMG_0217.jpg
my bot

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g197/sla...61/IMG_0199.jpg
our other bot

all my photos and a few videos:
http://s56.photobucket.com/albums/g197/slade6061/

a few of the pictures are blurry, i had my camera on the wrong settings.

[billybob_81067]

Damn... some of those robo-babes look pretty hawt!

:p

[Checkmate]

I stumbled upon this post recently and I noticed a few inconsistencies in your post.. I guess I'll just quote them and then correct them and or comment. ;)



the competition didnt go nearly as well as it should have. there were far too many electronics issues (the IFI isaac 16 motherboard sucked) and the organization wasnt great. ....
There isn't much wrong with IFI. Either you use it right or you don't use it right. I've been using IFI for over 5 years now including F.I.R.S.T and BBIQ. This is actually the first year we used anything different. (IE: The Spektrum DX6 w/ BR6000 bot receiver). We used it though due to size issues. If you've ever seen the inside of my robot (Checkmate) then you would probably plainly see why we switched. I'm not saying that IFI is perfect. I personally witnessed a lot of people having trouble over at the test box having intermitent signal w/ the competition port. The real problem this year with IFI was not having Tom there (The IFI guy). On top of that the IFI has a few things it needs in order to run flawlessly. Good mounting (don't have it bang into things), it's own dedicated power supply, and you can't have it near any of your high current wires. As far as event organization goes - it might not have been perfect, but it isn't exactly easy to run an event of that size. Something I've learned over the last five years at IQ is you need to know who to go to for specific things. As far as testing your robot goes - you should have just lined up with it and waited your turn. It's what everyone does. You can't expect them to come over to your pit table and grab you. They probably saw you on the list and just went on to the next person seeing that you weren't there. That list is for people to pass inspection not to use the test box.


i took a look at the bot we were going up against... great. not good. they were a full bodied spinner that was low to the ground and fairly compact... and had a 40 pound, 1/2" thick titanium shell with 1" x 1/2" x 3" teeth. damn. they had 4 magmotors powering the spinner. according to them it spun with a linear velocity of 400 MPH and put out 150 horsepower. which, now that i think about it, seems a bit excessive considering each of the 4 motors puts out 3 horsepower, but whatever. its still 4 magmotors on a 40 pound spinner, falcon had only 2. the only way to beat them is to flip them, but hey, thats what our bot is designed to do, right?

Your match: I thought you might like that.
http://img.cba.mit.edu/imagebank/060426_BattleBotsIQ/movies/DSCF2013_excellerator_pneumagic.AVI

Awesome robot. Excellerator is a scary fight for anyone.

that full bodied spinner did exceptionally well, even though its nothing special. hey, if you have 13 girls teams from one school, one has to do well, right?
http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g197/slade6061/IMG_0214.jpg


Too bad they beat Excellerator 3 to get Third place and afterwards Black Widow to get 2nd place.
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y35/06eturner/Friends/252_5251.jpg
Those girls worked damn hard on their robot and they deserve it. To just lump them with the rest of their school and saying "oh dumb luck" is stupid. Just because for the most part Carrollton had this 'quantity over quality' thing going on does not mean that god forbid some of them are talented or break the mold. It was a lot worse though. In previous years Carrollton has been known for taking a lot more robots. Some of which were slapped together in a month for competition. It gives them a bad name(and by them, I mean the other teams from their school that work and are interested in robotics). I was actually very surprised to see their teacher not allow two robots to compete because they showed up a week before competition asking what to do.

Videos:
http://www.buildersdb.com/marc/iq5/marvinator%20vs.%20hell%20raider.mpg
http://img.cba.mit.edu/imagebank/060426_BattleBotsIQ/movies/DSCF2158_marvinator_excellerator.AVI


spiderbot - full bodied spinner, it was amazingly effective when it went against carnegie mellon, it threw carnegie 10 feet high and it bounced off two walls before hitting the ground. so awesome.

You want to see a video of that match? If you watch very closely you can clearly see that Revenant totally missed the other robot, hit the wall, and then flew. Spiderblade or bot (I can't remember the name of it) did absolutely nothing to win there ;)

We went up against them shortly after and 1-hit K.O'd them by denting in their shell. They were nice people though and it's always nice to see people on low budgets build bots and still do pretty well. Kind of hard to compete with $10000 shells (IE: Excellerator, Blender, Revenant). The only difference between my bot and theirs was that they had absolutely no reinforcement. I was disappointed to see they didn't come this year. I talked to them for a while after our match and offered some advice.


brutality (college). paul is still awesome. he made essentially the same bot as greenwave, but smaller and more compact. he used the spektrum motherboard, which was a great choice. he had one huge spinner motor, and the drive motors were just 4 dewalt drill motors. guess what? he took 1st place in the college division, and half the matches he didnt even turn his spinner on. he just used his bot as a wedge to push the other bot around, it was so amazingly effective.

Actually he was using a Futaba 5cap for most of the competition up until we had our match with him and lost. He was having RF issues with his receiver and couldn't spin up the bot. Afterwards we took the Spektrum out of our bot and gave it to Paul so he could use the rest of the competition.

PS: Same Greenwave, different name. Nothing changed :) Well.. except for the fact that he was using a solenoid instead of that speed controller from robot solutions.


(insert bot name here) vs. icewave

icewave is last years college champion. they are a horizontal spinner like brutality, but they have a gas engine that sits above the blade, so theyre sorta top heavy. their blade got bent, they spun out of control, the blade hit the ground, and they did two full flips in the air, a few twists, and landed upside down. watching the slow motion replay was awesome.

First of all.. Marc's blade never bent. His robot is top heavy. I'll give you that. It's an amazing (And unique) robot. Wedges and other spinners have the potential of beating him.

examples:

http://img.cba.mit.edu/imagebank/060426_BattleBotsIQ/movies/DSCF1907_icewave_revenant.AVI
http://www.buildersdb.com/marc/iq5/Icewave%20vs.%20Guazabara.wmv
http://www.buildersdb.com/marc/iq5/Icewave%20vs.%20Hurricane%20Katrina.mpg
http://img.cba.mit.edu/imagebank/060426_BattleBotsIQ/movies/DSCF2007_icewave_lunatic.AVI

In that last one his starter chain locked up the blade and the moment created from hitting that spot in the arena and the blade suddenly stopping just flipped him over. Again no blade bending.


team "pretty in pink" (yes, it was an all girls team) made these stickers to give out to the teams they beat. they never got a chance to give one out. i laughed. two years ago they couldn't get their bot working, and someone from my team had to help them fix it. the same happened this year. except for my team helping to fix it. they didn't pass inspection, and didn't have a single match.

Two freshmen who built a fifteen pounder have the robot given to them two weeks before competition. They passed inspection. They also had two matches. By the way, whoever "wired" their robot from your team did it wrong. The Thor SC's were re-wired wrong and I had to go back and change it. Not to mention that the wiring was all there and intact prior to your team touching it and helping the "poor defenseless girls". So I'm not really sure what it is that they did. It was messy but all there. I checked it myself before they even got to the venue and i know that it was right (there simply was no time to re-wire it.) The only reason they had any problems at all passing inspection was due to a broken IFI motherboard/receiver which kept giving them issues w/ the competition port.

PS: I know it's hard to believe.. but girls(women) can be engineers. They can also build some damn good robots.

(I should have made a different user-name so this is a little disclaimer that in no way do I represent the rest of my team)

[slade]

There isn't much wrong with IFI. Either you use it right or you don't use it right. I've been using IFI for over 5 years now including F.I.R.S.T and BBIQ. This is actually the first year we used anything different. (IE: The Spektrum DX6 w/ BR6000 bot receiver). We used it though due to size issues. If you've ever seen the inside of my robot (Checkmate) then you would probably plainly see why we switched. I'm not saying that IFI is perfect. I personally witnessed a lot of people having trouble over at the test box having intermitent signal w/ the competition port. The real problem this year with IFI was not having Tom there (The IFI guy). On top of that the IFI has a few things it needs in order to run flawlessly. Good mounting (don't have it bang into things), it's own dedicated power supply, and you can't have it near any of your high current wires. As far as event organization goes - it might not have been perfect, but it isn't exactly easy to run an event of that size. Something I've learned over the last five years at IQ is you need to know who to go to for specific things. As far as testing your robot goes - you should have just lined up with it and waited your turn. It's what everyone does. You can't expect them to come over to your pit table and grab you. They probably saw you on the list and just went on to the next person seeing that you weren't there. That list is for people to pass inspection not to use the test box.
thanks for responding, heh you actually cared enough to sign up for the forum to post.

we didnt have any problems with the IFI last year, but we just had too many problems this year. our isaac 16 had to be sent back twice, and it was still having issues. it was mounted on springs, out of the way of the wires, and yes it had a dedicated 11.1 volt battery pack. it was just resetting upon taking any ammount of shock (even just hitting the shell with my fist), and i know i certainly wasnt the only one there with the same problem, there were plenty of other bots there that had issues. and yeah, I heard that Tom was there previous years but not this year because IFI stopped supporting battlebots. it probably would have helped if someone from IFI was there.

i know event organization cant be expected to be perfect, but from my experiences it was horrible this year, a lot worse than last year. first of all i do find it somewhat annoying that the person authorized to do pneumatic safety checks doesnt even know what to check for. And trust me, i talked to the people working there enough, they said clearly to just give them our pit number, and they would come get us. that alone isnt too bad, but then switching the matches around on us?


Your match: I thought you might like that.
http://img.cba.mit.edu/imagebank/060426_BattleBotsIQ/movies/DSCF2013_excellerator_pneumagic.AVI
ooh... thats just brutal to have to watch again. you can see me trying to get it to drive, and trying to fire the arm... it didnt work out too well. i would have actually had a chance at winning that match if it did work, it took them quite a while to get through the titanium.

i have a video on google video (which i think i posted here) of my bot actually working. i also found a 20 minute video someone posted of a few of the matches.

do you have any other videos of the competition? maybe my match against spinal tap? :p id like to have the video of the one time my bot actually worked, its the only match my advisor didnt videotape.

now that i think about it, i think excellerator 3 took their second loss against marvinator due to either IFI issues, or an electrical connection coming loose.


Too bad they beat Excellerator 3 to get Third place and afterwards Black Widow to get 2nd place.
im glad they beat black widow, honestly that bot did not deserve the placing it got. its not an entirely bad bot, but that team had a lot of luck.


Those girls worked damn hard on their robot and they deserve it. To just lump them with the rest of their school and saying "oh dumb luck" is stupid. Just because for the most part Carrollton has this 'quantity over quality' thing going on does not mean that god forbid some of them are talented or break the mold. It was a lot worse though. In previous years Carrollton has been known for taking a lot more robots. Most of which (with the exception of two) were slapped together in two weeks for competition. It gives them a bad name. I was actually very surprised to see their teacher not allow like five robots to compete because they showed up a week before competition asking what to do.
I think you missed that my "hey, if you have 13 girls teams from one school one has to do well" comment was a joke. i know it was a good bot, and i know that they are knowledgeable and worked hard. by saying that it was "nothing special" i meant that it didnt have any clear advantage over any other full bodied spinner. it beat excellerator 3 when the spinner is less powerful, and the design overall seems less effective. i didnt mean to discredit the girls working on it by any means. I actually think some of the girls on other teams (like marvinator and dark angel) put in more work than most of the members on my team. then again, if you ask either of my advisors they would say that i did 95% of the work on my bot. however, there are teams like that pneumatic hammer bot who i had to help last year, and pretty in pink, who didnt appear to put any work or effort in.


You want to see a video of that match? If you watch very closely you can clearly see that Revenant totally missed the other robot, hit the wall, and then flew. Spiderblade or bot (I can't remember the name of it) did absolutely nothing to win there ;)
really? i was in the stands for that match and it looked to me like revenant didnt move, and spiderbot hit them. id like to see the video if you have it.


Actually he was using a Futaba 5cap for most of the competition up until we had our match with him and lost. He was having RF issues with his receiver and couldn't spin up the bot. Afterwards we took the Spektrum out of our bot and gave it to Paul so he could use the rest of the competition.

PS: Same Greenwave, different name. Nothing changed :) Well.. except for the fact that he was using a solenoid instead of that speed controller from robot solutions.

First of all.. Marc's blade never bent. His robot is top heavy. I'll give you that. It's an amazing (And unique) robot. Wedges and other spinners have the potential of beating him.
hmm, i just heard that paul used the spektrum the whole competition, but i didnt hear that directly from him. I didnt know that he was having radio issues, i thought that he just didnt want to stress his bot too much. the blade already had quite a bit of damage on it, and last year the gearbox broke on him against falcon. i thought he was preserving it and just using his bot strategically as a wedge.

brutality isnt the same as greenwave. its the same concept, same blade, and i think one or two other parts are the same. besides that, everything was new.

hmm, it looked like the blade bent, but i never saw it afterwards. i guess the bot just was knocked off balance. it is a great bot, and deserved first place last year. that reminds me though, what happened to alakran? i loved that bot, and was disappointed that they didnt come back this year.


Try this on for size. Two freshmen who built a fifteen pounder get that terrible excuse for a robot dumped on them a week before competition. They passed inspection. They also had two matches. By the way, whoever "wired" their robot from your team did it wrong. The Thor SC's were re-wired wrong and I had to go back and change it. Not to mention that the wiring was all there and intact prior to your team touching it and helping the poor defenseless girls. So I'm not really sure what it is that they did. It was messy but all there. I checked it myself before they even got to the venue and i know that it was right (there simply was no time to re-wire it.) The only reason they had any problems at all passing inspection was due to a broken IFI motherboard/receiver which kept giving them issues w/ the competition port.

PS: I know it's hard to believe.. but girls(women) can be engineers. They can also build some damn good robots.

-Checkmate (Checkmate Bot) and Mean and Green Tech Advisor
that would be pringle that helped them two years ago. he graduated last year. i wasnt on the team two years ago, i just heard from my teammates that they asked him to help them with their bot.

i just brought it up because i found it funny that they spent their time setting up this arrogant plan of what they would do when they won, and they never won a match.

also, i talked to a few of the girls on dark angel and they didnt seem to like pretty in pink, they said the team didnt put much work in and came essentially just to skip school.


PS: I know it's hard to believe.. but girls(women) can be engineers. They can also build some damn good robots.
i know, and its not hard to believe. youre acting like im sexist (although admittedly, i guess my posts could have been interpreted that way, which is why i have to try to explain myself). I know girls can be good engineers and im glad when that is proven... although, a lot of the girls there were there just for the trip.

i didnt get a chance to watch most of the videos, actually i still have an essay to write for tomorrow. and now im even worse off for it. oh well. thanks for taking the time to respond.

Play Paintball!

how did you find this thread, anyway? just a random search online?

[Undertow10]

first of all i do find it somewhat annoying that the person authorized to do pneumatic safety checks doesnt even know what to check for.

I believe I was your internal inspector, and I really hope this quote isn't directed toward me. Aside from the fact that practically none of your components had pressure ratings stamped on them and you never showed documentation for anything, I took your word on most things because you said the parts came from a kit. The goal of the safety inspector is to make sure robots are safe, which yours was. You had burst discs, you had properly mounted tanks, proper regulators, proper tubing. After running through the standard checklist, there was nothing more to it. Building a safe robot is YOUR responsibility first and foremost. If you saw a problem with the inspection process, it should have been your duty to bring it up to the inspector or request another inspector.

[slade]

I believe I was your internal inspector, and I really hope this quote isn't directed toward me. Aside from the fact that practically none of your components had pressure ratings stamped on them and you never showed documentation for anything, I took your word on most things because you said the parts came from a kit. The goal of the safety inspector is to make sure robots are safe, which yours was. You had burst discs, you had properly mounted tanks, proper regulators, proper tubing. After running through the standard checklist, there was nothing more to it. Building a safe robot is YOUR responsibility first and foremost. If you saw a problem with the inspection process, it should have been your duty to bring it up to the inspector or request another inspector.
it was not directed towards you or the safety inspection (it was actually more thorough than i remembered last year). it was directed towards the fact that before filling the tank, i was required to get it approved and get a sticker put on it, and the person checked that it was marked "3000 PSI" but did not check the hydrotest date, as most paintball fields would. i tried to show him the hydrotest date but he just looked at the pressure rating, saying some tanks could only be filled to 1200 PSI or so.

I know it is my responsibility to build a safe robot, and i did that. the tank was currently in hydro, since it was fairly new. the piston, solenoid and hosing downstream was rated to an operating pressure of 300 PSI, twice what it was running at, and i could have given you documentation on the piston but it was tucked away with all the other documentation. the solenoid I had the model number of and could have looked it up online for you in a moment, and the hosing had been stamped "300 PSI" but I cut the hose to short lengths. it might still have been printed somewhere. I never said anything was from a kit, but everything was properly rated and had been tested multiple times.

[Checkmate]

I'll have to start with an apology. Not sure what mood I was in when I read it yesterday. There was also some misinformation and I should have come about it a different way. Either way I'm glad you replied in a much better manner than I.

I should have asked about the IFI and how you used it. If you shock mounted it and did all that stuff you certainly knew what you were doing and probably had a defective motherboard. Last year we had that issue where we would hit and basically I'd have to sit on the robot reset button. About Tom though.. it's just that IQ and USFIRST nationals were on the same week. That's all. I love Tom and think hes a great guy. I was actually really upset to find out that he couldn't make it to the event. As far as IFI goes though. Bill is a trained IFI person and we had all the event software, hardware, and stuff. The only difference is that Tom has more experience. A lot of the times there were issues and no one even told Bill. I guess they either didn't know he was in charge of the IFI stuff or couldn't find him.

There should be more videos online I'll try to find them for you. From last year and this year. I really didn't get to see many matches this year. Between my own robot and helping so many others the whole week is this huge blur of excitement.


now that i think about it, i think excellerator 3 took their second loss against marvinator due to either IFI issues, or an electrical connection coming loose.

You're right - wire loss or IFI issue.. Even then to take that many hits from Excellerator and out last them is quite impressive. Luckilly for MnG they had an IFI all throughout the event and experienced no problems that I can see with it.



I think you missed that my "hey, if you have 13 girls teams from one school one has to do well" comment was a joke.

Yea. In retrospect. I should have replied differently. I know what you mean about the amount of work put into a robot. It's tough sometimes. w/ respect to their bot a lot of things come into play especially money though. It'd be nice to afford 4 minimags, 4 astros, a 10,000 dollar shell. etc. Perhaps not as effective but it still worked out. The girls on pretty in pink now are totally different girls from before. They are a group of freshmen who inherited the robot almost two weeks before competition and rebuilt it/got it working. It was nice to see it run at all and I think in those two weeks the girls learned a lot things. Next year they can take that information and build a better robot. They seemed interested which is good.


really? i was in the stands for that match and it looked to me like revenant didnt move, and spiderbot hit them. id like to see the video if you have it.

Yea.. I wish I had a video of it. I recently formatted. I know the people from Icewave, Greenwave, and Revenant personally so they might have some of it online or on their computers. In the match you could see revenant spin up and go to the other square where spiderblade was spinning in place (not sure why). The driver miss-aligned and hit the wall full force. It was very painful to watch.



hmm, i just heard that paul used the spektrum the whole competition, but i didnt hear that directly from him. I didnt know that he was having radio issues, i thought that he just didnt want to stress his bot too much. the blade already had quite a bit of damage on it, and last year the gearbox broke on him against falcon. i thought he was preserving it and just using his bot strategically as a wedge.

Nah. It was reception issues. I think he rebuilt the gearbox last year because he went to R3 and won that competition. Then he remachined the bot over. It's still greenwave but new parts (for the most part). The blade is pretty beat up on some edges but far from un-useable. If you watched his matches though from like his 3rd match on he was using the blade a lot more. The Spektrum solved his RF problems. He probably had a damaged futaba receiver.


hmm, it looked like the blade bent, but i never saw it afterwards. i guess the bot just was knocked off balance. it is a great bot, and deserved first place last year. that reminds me though, what happened to alakran? i loved that bot, and was disappointed that they didnt come back this year.

He kinda drove into that bad spot on the floor. His wedge popped up. His starter chain jammed the blade and well that force from the blade stopping created a nice moment/torque and flipped him right over. I'm not sure what happened to Alakran but one of their robots this year looked very similar to it.


i just brought it up because i found it funny that they spent their time setting up this arrogant plan of what they would do when they won, and they never won a match.

I dont think it was much of an arrogant plan. If you met some of these girls they were quite nice. They probably just wanted to give something to teams they beat. I'm not so sure they ment it in a demeaning way though.


also, i talked to a few of the girls on dark angel and they didnt seem to like pretty in pink, they said the team didnt put much work in and came essentially just to skip school.

I dunno. I saw two of them work every day for two weeks straight on either that or their 15lb. For the rest of the team I can't speak though because the only faces/names I remember are the two that I helped. I'm sure that on a lot of the other days their team was there.


i know, and its not hard to believe. youre acting like im sexist (although admittedly, i guess my posts could have been interpreted that way, which is why i have to try to explain myself). I know girls can be good engineers and im glad when that is proven... although, a lot of the girls there were there just for the trip.

Yea. I apologize again. I should have written a much nicer *FIRST* reply rather than doing what I did. It's the same with guys. It happens on every team. I've felt the frustration of being on a huge FIRST team and then seeing some people just come along for the free trip. It's a problem that happens with every team/school. There isn't a real solution for it because you can argue that somehow those people are getting as much as THEY want out of the experience where as you are getting much more out of it because you want to. In the end it's all exposure to engineering that matters.


Play Paintball!

how did you find this thread, anyway? just a random search online?

Heh. I'm actually going to play on saturday =)

And as far as finding this.. someone sent me the link and I'm not sure how they found it themselves.

[WenULiVeUdiE]

Looks like an awesome program slade! The more I read about it, the more I would like to try it out.

I am very happy to see women in the program as well. It is important they are exposed to engineering as well. I don't mean to brag, but my team has doubled the amount of female members from last year and we have held assemblies for female students about female engineers.

I don't have pictures from Nationals to share with you. But we didn't have anything as cool as that. Our robot was too damn reliable. Nothing broke furing the entire 3-day period, so I had nothing to fix. I ended up sanding and polishing my cell phone as well fusing a vice with out work table with another team member.

[slade]

Eh. I'll have to start with an apology. Not sure what mood I was in when I read it yesterday. There was also some misinformation and I should have come about it a different way. Either way I'm glad you replied in a much better manner than I.
hmm? maybe im too used to the internet, but your reply seemed fine. i should probably apologize, since although i loved the competition, i wasnt too happy with a few things afterwards.


I should have asked about the IFI (or iffy) and how you used it. If you shock mounted it and did all that stuff you certainly knew what you were doing and probably had a defective motherboard. Last year we had that issue where we would hit and basically I'd have to sit on the robot reset button. About Tom though.. it's just that IQ and USFIRST nationals were on the same week. That's all. I love Tom and think hes a great guy. I was actually really upset to find out that he couldn't make it to the event. As far as IFI goes though. Bill is a trained IFI person (for all extents and purposes) the only difference is that Tom has much more experience. A lot of the times there were issues no one even told Bill. I guess they either didn't know or couldn't find him.
maybe i should have explained the IFI issue better. when we started working on the robots we had two isaac 16s and one isaac 32 motherboard. one isaac 16 was not working and the team sent it back to IFI for it to get fixed, and it was returned after a little while. the plan was we would have two robots, which would each use an isaac 16 motherboard. the other robot was made as compact as possible (as you probably saw, that was "the brick") and it could barely fit the isaac 16 and servos inside. my robot had to be larger due to the arm and pneumatics, and the gearboxes. my friend origionally was going to do all the wiring for my bot, but i did the majority of it after he stopped coming. i finished the wiring and got to the point where the bot was driveable. at that point, the other robot was having a lot of issues. it would run fine while tethered, but when the radio was connected the wheels would run, then it would stop, then run, then stop. for a while they thought the issue was that the signal could not get through the 3/4" steel, so they first drilled a hole, and when that did not solve the problem, they cut a 3" hole out and covered it with lexan. it still didnt solve the problem. then they found out that even when the radio transmitter was right next to the isaac 16, the same thing would happen. so the other team took my isaac 16, and tested it in their bot... it worked fine. so they kept my isaac 16, and sent the other one back to IFI again... this was about a week before the ship date. i had to finish my robot, and then the night before the ship date i had to install the isaac 32 motherboard. to do so i used delrin mounts and lexan to hold the motherboard above the servos and gearbox, and had to redo the wiring. then of course because of the added weight of the new motherboard, transmitter and lexan, my bot was .5 pounds overweight, so i had to swiss cheese as much lexan as i could. then, when i finally was able to load the program and run it, the bot seemed to work fine... although it lost the radio signal at one point. not great. it was midnight of the ship date though, so i couldnt really do anything at that point but just pack up the bot.

when we got to the competition we had the isaac 16 back from IFI. i wanted to use it because the isaac 32 was larger and heavier, it had lost the signal too, and i was afraid of a hard hit knocking the mounts i made loose, since i didnt exactly have a lot of time to make them. so i switched everything out and reconnected all the wires. then my instructor said he wouldnt give us the program for the robot... he had "forgotten" his laptop at the hotel. the thing was, the program was the same program used last year which someone else who already graduated wrote. a freshman on the team, abraham, who had not done any work on either robot until the trip had said he could program the bot. when i wrote the documentation package my instructor told me to put him on the list as the "programmer", and i didnt even know who he was until he showed up when we left for the airport. aparently he had done some programming on FIRST vex. anyway, my instructor wanted him to be the one to program the bot since he was on the trip, instead of reusing the old program. so the morning of the inspection he downloaded the base program online, and we had to modify it to work on the bot. after that we had to go through the safety inspections and the bot worked fine (for all 10 seconds i tested it), although i wanted to test it out longer to make sure it wouldnt lose the signal again, which as you already know never happened. the first match was our test, and it didnt go too well. the bot lost the signal a few times, although we still won; same with the second match. after the second match we got someone there to help us, who i take it was bill. i told him what was happening and he told me to relocate the isaac and twist the motor wires, both of which i did. i also resecured some of the connections. the bot worked fine after that for the match against spinal tap, and, well, you know what happened when i went against black widow :( . i thought everything was working fine but not only was the isaac still having issues, only one motor was working. again i thought i fixed everything, but it was still having issues for the match with excellerator, which was just painful. im still not sure if the isaac was resetting or losing the radio signal; i know it was resetting when it took any shock, but at some points it appeared that it was losing the radio signal too, and would stop working even when it wasnt being jarred. also, it appeared that even firing the solenoid would mess up the motherboard.

given that, and the $3000 of damage to the bot i spent months working on, maybe you can understand why im not exactly happy with IFI.


There should be more videos online I'll try to find them for you. From last year and this year. I really didn't get to see many matches this year. Between my own robot and helping so many others the whole week is this huge blur of excitement.
thanks, id like to see some of the videos. there were some good matches, and i know i missed a few while working on my bot.


Yea. In retrospect. I should have replied differently. I know what you mean about the amount of work put into a robot. It's tough sometimes. w/ respect to their bot a lot of things come into play especially money though. It'd be nice to afford 4 minimags, 4 astros, a 10,000 dollar shell. etc. Perhaps not as effective but it still worked out. The girls on pretty in pink now are totally different girls from before. They are a group of freshmen who inherited the robot almost two weeks before competition and were told to build it. It was nice to see it run at all and I think in those two weeks the girls learned a lot things. Next year they can take that information and build a better robot. They seemed interested which is good.
heh, when i talked to the girls on dark angel they didnt really seem to like pretty in pink, they talked about them like they didnt do any work and were there just to miss school, and hadnt really put much work in. did the bot actually work? i wanted to see it, but never saw it actually run and was sort of disappointed. that is great though if they actually did put in effort, and want to come back to the competition (to compete) next year.

i know what you mean that money can be an issue. well, then again, maybe i dont, i really lucked out. my bot got the majority of the team funds since it did so well the previous year. then again, almost all of that went to the drive system. everything else the team bought was only a few hundred dollars, and the guys from raytheon got us a titanium sponsorship so the team didnt have to pay for that. the other bot reused all of its parts, the only new parts were the steel, bolts and a switch. maybe the wires too. only a few hundred dollars was put into it. it was origionally going to be called the "red-headed stepchild", but katie, the red-headed girl who worked on that bot, didnt really like the idea. then again, ross didnt really like my flowchart either... but he deserved that. ...hey, whoa, i never even posted my flowchart? here you go:

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/3635/roboticsproblemsolvingflowchar.jpg


Nah. It was reception issues. I think he rebuilt the gearbox last year because he went to R3 and won that competition. Then he remachined the bot over. It's still greenwave but new parts (for the most part). The blade is pretty beat up on some edges but far from un-useable. If you watched his matches though from like his 3rd match on he was using the blade a lot more. The Spektrum solved his RF problems. He probably had a damaged futaba receiver.
R3 is the competition in september, right? how large is it compared to BBIQ? we thought about entering it last year but never did. we can this year if we want to enter the brick, or if we can get a new skirt for my flipper (and get a spektrum, or get the damn IFI to work). im not sure if ill even have time (or money) to do so though, since there are a lot of other things i have to do.


He kinda drove into that bad spot on the floor. His wedge popped up. His starter chain jammed the blade and well that force from the blade stopping created a nice moment/torque and flipped him right over. I'm not sure what happened to Alakran but one of their robots this year looked very similar to it.
ooh, yeah i know the floor wasnt really even, that caused us quite a few problems too. with a bot like that i can see how it would cause a lot of problems. what college was alakran from? i didnt know the college even came back for the competition again. what was the bot that looked similar to alakran? i dont remember seeing anything even close. or were you talking about that pneumatic flipper that kept getting caught on the floor? what i really loved about alakran was the clamping/flipping system, it was very well designed and amazingly effective.


I dont think it was much of an arrogant plan. If you met some of these girls they were quite nice. They probably just wanted to give something to teams they beat. I'm not so sure they ment it in a demeaning way though.

I dunno. I saw two of them work every day for two weeks straight on either that or their 15lb. For the rest of the team I can't speak though because the only faces/names I remember are the two that I helped. I'm sure that on a lot of the other days their team was there.
oh well, it doesnt matter at this point. it just seemed like one of those "haha, we beat you" kind of things. thats great if they did put in a lot of effort though. but what do you mean you saw them work every day for two weeks? the competition was less than a week, were you visiting Carrollton or something?


Yea. I apologize again. I should have written a much nicer *FIRST* reply rather than doing what I did. It's the same with guys. It happens on every team. I've felt the frustration of being on a huge FIRST team and then seeing some people just come along for the free trip. It's a problem that happens with every team/school. There isn't a real solution for it because you can argue that somehow those people are getting as much as THEY want out of the experience where as you are getting much more out of it because you want to. In the end it's all exposure to engineering that matters.
I know what youre talking about. especially since its junior year for most of the team, the majority of my team rarely showed up; i did about 95% of the work on my flipper, and the brick was done mostly by two seniors with some help from katie and david. im fine with that though, because everyone else actually did help when they did show up, and helped at the competition. with one exception. one kid joined the team at the beginning of the year and intended to create a mini bot, but he never did anything, he never even started designing it. he just melted solder to amuse himself. he went on the trip though, and the way our school is set up we couldnt really prevent it even though even our advisors didnt want him on the team. oh, and did i mention that he go on the trip with his mom, and room with his mom, but she wrote his documentation for him. i got so frustrated with him at one point i asked him what he had actually done for the team, and all he could say is "david told me to drill a few holes on the brick, but i drilled them in the wrong place so david had to redo it."

(theres one every year... and it seems to be getting progressively worse)

/rant.

personally, i think that someone should not be able to be on the team if they do not do work, or even try to work, when they are present, especially if they interfere with the team. it would have been much better if i could have just kicked him off the team. instead, i had to just talked loudly about drugs infront of his mom :p


Heh. I'm actually going to play on saturday =)
nice! i wasnt sure if you actually played, since it looked like you signed up for this thread. i wish i could play tomorrow, instead i have to take the SAT... but i am going to be playing in a tournament sunday.



And as far as finding this.. someone sent me the link and I'm not sure how they found it themselves.
hmm, google for the win? or does your friend play paintball?



my robotics teammate went to the competition with a very nice camera and took a lot of photos, about 1 GB actually. if he ever gets them to me, ill post some of them up online.

oh yeah, what college do you go to?

*edit* i forgot to ask, do you know who won the HS competition? i had to leave before it ended to make the flight, and still didnt get home until 2 AM. im assuming it was E2V2.

[slade]

Looks like an awesome program slade! The more I read about it, the more I would like to try it out.

I am very happy to see women in the program as well. It is important they are exposed to engineering as well. I don't mean to brag, but my team has doubled the amount of female members from last year and we have held assemblies for female students about female engineers.

I don't have pictures from Nationals to share with you. But we didn't have anything as cool as that. Our robot was too damn reliable. Nothing broke furing the entire 3-day period, so I had nothing to fix. I ended up sanding and polishing my cell phone as well fusing a vice with out work table with another team member.
you should try it out, it would be nice to see you at the competition. and it is great that there are women getting involved in battlebots in engineering, although itd be nice if it was from more than just that one school. our team has one girl, down 50% from last year. (because of that she got her own room too, i had to room with 3-4 guys and sleep on the floor :( )

heh, well everything on our robot was quite reliable with the exception of the IFI, but hey, everything becomes far less reliable in an arena with 40 pounds of titanium powered by 4 magmotors. that reminds me of another advantage of battlebots, it teaches you to design for high stress environments. im sure my bot would have been just fine for picking dasies, or whatever you do over there at FIRST (just kidding :p ;) )

[Adriana]

Hello, Its Adriana from Checkmate.. I was reading around and wanted to comment on a few things, I'm sure Checkmate (Sergio) will get around to the rest.

1: In regards to the floor being uneven… The Crewbots work for days. Some of these days go without sleep, only thing keeping them going are cases of red bull. They put the Battlebox up to the best of their ability. To say the least, it's not an easy task. Many of the competitors really do not grasp the self-sacrifice that these individuals go through during this period. I’ve never worked with a more dedicated group of people, whom come together and try their best to put on a great show for you guys. While the box might not be perfect, there sure do a fine job.

2: College teams did compete and have been competing since BBIQ 3.0. The college teams that competed this year were

Carnegie Mellon: Revenant
FIU: Checkmate/Chernobyl
UM: Hurricane Katrina/The Shocker
Tulane: Icewave
Polytech of PR: Black Thunder
University of RP: Manta Raya/Guazabara
Missouri State" bear Necessity
Worcester: Brutality
Dunwoody: Lunatic


and in regards to:
" but what do you mean you saw them work every day for two weeks? the competition was less than a week, were you visiting Carrollton or something?"

-Where Checkmate is built, is also where all the Carrollton robots are built. To say the least, Pretty and Pink lived there the last two weeks. With help coming from Sergio, Jesus, myself, parents, and adult supervisors, the girls were able to get their robot together and compete. Even though they did not do amazing, to say they got there is more then enough. Those girls worked really hard, and their dedication to that robot and determination to compete blew me away.

-Adriana

[slade]

so aparently this thread has somehow been found by just about everyone who was at battlebots IQ. I thought i should post again to try to clarify some things; I misinterpreted some things, and think some of what i have said was misinterpreted.

first of all, aparently dark angel was talking about the old pretty in pink team. The team used to be a team of seniors and as checkmate said, this year a team of freshmen inherited the same bot with the same team name. the old team members didnt put in much work while the new team put in a lot of work in the limited time they were allowed. what i heard from lauren was about the old team, but i thought it was in referance to this years team. I unfortunately never met anyone on team pretty in pink so what i knew about them was just what i heard from others, and in retrospect i shouldnt have said anything. I would like to apologize to everyone on team pretty in pink as i posted based on a misinterpretation. I did not intend to offend anyone.


press coverage:

dark angel was on the front page of the miami herald, and our team's other bot (the brick) was mentioned in the article. it was sort of funny, the writer didnt know anything about battlebots, and really felt the need to draw attention to the catholic schoolgirls.
in case anyone was wondering, that was more a commentary on the way the media works than anything else. ive always found it funny how articles are written by and for people who dont know much about the subject, and the author draws attention to whatever will sell. i had no intention to discredit any of the girls teams at battlebots IQ.


that full bodied spinner did exceptionally well, even though its nothing special. hey, if you have 13 girls teams from one school, one has to do well, right?
as i already said, by "its nothing special" i meant that theres nothing that clearly stands out, like the fact that falcon was a titanium bot with a 50 lb drum, or excellerator 3 was titanium with 4 mag motors powering the shell. it was very well designed and implemented, and the girls on the team deserved the wins that they got. my "if you have 13 girls teams from one school, one has to do well" comment was a joke, as i said, which in retrospect i shouldnt have made. I can see why it wouldnt go over well with the girls teams, especially if they didnt realize that it was a joke. again, im sorry.


I dont think it was much of an arrogant plan. If you met some of these girls they were quite nice. They probably just wanted to give something to teams they beat. I'm not so sure they ment it in a demeaning way though.
at the time, as i already said, i thought team pretty in pink was a team that really hadnt put much effort in. i thought what lauren said was about this years team, not the old team. i tend to hate arrogance, and the way it appeared to me was that a team that hadnt put much effort in came to the competition acting arrogantly, and then didnt get to compete. in perspective now it doesnt seem as bad, and if it was more of a good humored joke, thats fine.


Hello, Its Adriana from Checkmate.. I was reading around and wanted to comment on a few things, I'm sure Checkmate (Sergio) will get around to the rest.

1: In regards to the floor being uneven… The Crewbots work for days. Some of these days go without sleep, only thing keeping them going are cases of red bull. They put the Battlebox up to the best of their ability. To say the least, it's not an easy task. Many of the competitors really do not grasp the self-sacrifice that these individuals go through during this period. I’ve never worked with a more dedicated group of people, whom come together and try their best to put on a great show for you guys. While the box might not be perfect, there sure do a fine job.
? i cant recall saying anything to discredit the people who set up the floor, i only really mentioned it in passing. i know that setting up the battlebox must have taken a lot of effort (and i saw the pile of empty red bulls underneath it). Although, the floor was more uneven than it was last year; your teammate mentioned that icewave lost a match because of the unevenness of the floor, and i know that when i set up my bot in the blue square, i had to offset it towards the right or risk it getting caught on the intersection between two parts of the floor. I love battlebots IQ, and know that it takes a lot of effort to put together and run, i was just a bit annoyed with some aspects of how it was run, as i already said.



2: College teams did compete and have been competing since BBIQ 3.0. The college teams that competed this year were

Carnegie Mellon: Revenant
FIU: Checkmate/Chernobyl
UM: Hurricane Katrina/The Shocker
Tulane: Icewave
Polytech of PR: Black Thunder
University of RP: Manta Raya/Guazabara
Missouri State" bear Necessity
Worcester: Brutality
Dunwoody: Lunatic
why did you bring this up? i know college teams have been competing for a while. i just asked what school checkmate was from.


and in regards to:
" but what do you mean you saw them work every day for two weeks? the competition was less than a week, were you visiting Carrollton or something?"

-Where Checkmate is built, is also where all the Carrollton robots are built. To say the least, Pretty and Pink lived there the last two weeks. With help coming from Sergio, Jesus, myself, parents, and adult supervisors, the girls were able to get their robot together and compete. Even though they did not do amazing, to say they got there is more then enough. Those girls worked really hard, and their dedication to that robot and determination to compete blew me away.

-Adriana
ahh, i guess that had me confused because all our bots are built in the school. as i already said though, what i said about team pretty in pink was a misinterpretation, and i wish i hadnt said anything.