Once again, a new event has been announced and I’m shit out of working robots.
This event is the RoboWars 2024 Nationals, which will be Open Feathersweights!
The first time Opens will have been competing since 2019.
I’ve been kicking an idea around for a while for a new bot, an assymetrical, counter rotating, dual vertical spinner.
But one day, I just happened to spot the remains of The Verdict and Knightrous Wedge sitting on a shelf together and thought, “Hmm, those could almost bolt together…”
And so, we began making a chimera from these two corpses.
Gas bottle vert spinner with a floor shaving wedge…
Let the gutting begin.
Everything removed from The Verdict.
Lol, budget Cobalt…
Time to start cutting up Knightrous Wedge.
First few bits
More and more
Now to cut away more and more to make them join together
Due to weight the plow disc gets cut back to the bar minimum
Close and closer
Now it needs some short term bonds
With it tacked together, I will be able to grind away all the exist wedge and gas bottle till everything matches up nicely.
In December RoboWars announced a Sportsmen event to be held in Hamilton, Queensland. Below is a collection of photos and diary of the event from my fuzzy memory.
Legnum handling robot hauling duties!
Accommodation was decent
The venue, held at The Shed.
Unloaded the robot and parts/tools into the pits
Arena nearly up and people bumping in
More arena/pit shots
More arena/pit shots
More arena/pit shots
Mistakes Were Made – Part A
Spiro
AirStrike
Marshal Ass
PotHead
Citizen Flips
Saw & Order
Hatchet Plan
Raptor SP
Terror Australis
Zenhiero
Mistakes Were Made – Part B
Scarifer
Pickasso
I need a bigger hammer
Topple
Learning Curve
Giga Blue
Señor Prickly Pear
Banana Bender
Fight 1: PotHead
Other than driving The Verdict for 30 seconds prior to leaving for the event a day before, I was going into this one blind. And it really showed. I’m super rusty with my driving, doing a lot of weaving instead of straight driving, spinning in circles from over shooting when turning (Really should have put some steering rates into the radio) and I noticed one side was a little bound up compared to the other (it pulled to one side when going forward).
There was a lot of dancing around as I tried to pin Pothead to the wall so I could wail on it with the hammer, but it was actually hard to push to the wall without it slipping off the front. Eventually I managed to get a few decent hits, mangling the pot easily.
Pothead’s saw was scratching the paint in the corners when we collided but did nothing more then that which was nice. However by the timer ran out, the judges has decided the winner was Pothead. It went the full three minutes and didn’t fail, so I consider that a good start to the event. Back in the pits, I just tightened all the nuts and bolts to ensure nothing was going to fall apart and then charged the battery, ready for the next match
Fight 2: Raptor
After the Pothead match, I dug into the menus of the radio and dialed in some rate limiting on the steering to try to reduce the twitchiness. Raptor is a full fat featherweight that swapped out their usually vertical discs for a pair of saw blades and wedges…… (I wasn’t expecting these since it was a sportsmen event, but the EO allowed it.)
There was a lot of back and forth, sparks and hammering through out the match, there was a moment where they actually wedged me up and onto the weapon, which missed the internals my a few millimeters. After that, as it was clear the wedgelets were not something I could defeat, I just focused on pushing against their weapon, trying to hammer, stall and push them where possible. For the last ~30 seconds, I just jammed the weapon down on them to clamped on (The APD speed controller did well here, the thermal/current limiting saving it.)
Sadly, the judges gave it to Raptor.
Once again, there was no real damage other then a slice into the tongue on the robot and some more scratched paint.
