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.





oh, did i mention i had to design the team shirts too?


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 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 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 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:



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:




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.



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.



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? 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.