FIRST BATTLE: CSM ROBOTICS RUMBLE 3.0
[12/06/2004]
The CSM Robotics 3.0 Robot Rumble was held on Sunday, December 5, 2004. It was for the
current students of the CSM Robotics class to try out their robots in actual combat situations.
It was a rather interesting mix of robots and included two or three robots from former students who
also showed up for the event. According to the instructor, each successive class has produced
increasingly dangerous robots. From the looks of things, I would have to agree.
The doors opened at about 10:00 a.m. to the shop, and I arrived shortly thereafter (following
a very uncomfortable stop at a Subway store where I had to endure misogynous rap music playing
in the background - or, rather, over the LOUDspeakers - while my sandwich was being prepared).
My wife and I quickly went to work on the remaining items on my checklist. I cut the panels that
needed to be cut and wired up my spare battery pack while my wife applied the Con-tact paper
(marble finish) to the remaining bare panel and painted the heads of the armor-mounting bolts.
It was Noon when I finished making the final wheel adjustments - which was the last item on
my checklist. With my wife helping me, I was ready for the rumble with an hour to spare! All
my hard work and preparation had paid off! Well, except for one problem: I didn't look at my
assembly checklist to see if I missed anything before my first battle.
It came time for my first battle, which was against the Tasmanian Devil - a spinner robot
with a couple of very big teeth. Since these battles were unofficial and nobody was judging
or voting, no winner was announced. However, I thought I did rather well, considering the
serious problem I was having. I could barely control my robot! I thought it was a wicked
RF problem caused by signal reflections off all the metal tables that bordered the rink, but it turned out that it
was due to an item I had missed on my assembly checklist: I had not connected the antenna!
My control problem had been self-induced.Before I discovered my antenna problem, I thought the day was over for me, because I refused to enter any more battles if I could not control my robot. But after plugging in the antenna, life was restored, and I was ready to rumble again.
My next battle was a 4-way rumble against the Tasmanian Devil, Pyrabot (a pyramid shaped
robot), and T-34B (Ed Haas's
wedge/flipper bot). There was a problem either with the video camera or the camera operator, so I
can't prove this, but at one point I had all three bots pinned against the wall (with two
of them on top of me). That was fun. But my third battle was against the robot I feared
most, which was a devastating spinner. In the end, my robot prevailed! However, I did not
escape injury. My robot took one rather significant hit on the front (of course, it just had to
miss the Titanium plate, entirely, on this particular occasion.) Unfortunately, I never did
catch the name of this other robot! I've been so afraid of it that I didn't think to
ask.
To give an idea of how much (or how little) damage my robot actually sustained in the battles,
here is a shot of it after its first two battles. Most of the "damage" was done to the
Con-tact paper covering and not to the actual metal, itself (as you will see later in the
post-battle inspection photos). My external antenna got bent over pretty significantly, so I
will need to find a better solution for its placement.
The Tasmanian Devil took a few good gouges out of my robot in the first round. Here is a shot
of the two deepest wounds it inflicted upon the right side of Wedge of Deception. He was able
to hit me there when my robot decided not to play anymore due to the antenna being disconnected.
I finally went up against the other spinner. The match actually made me so nervous that I found
myself shaking after the bout. I was just worried about my robot becoming disabled - or worse,
a piece of debris being thrown into the unprotected audience. But I had positive control of my
robot and was able to get under the spinner easily (with or without the weapon spinning) and
push it around and up against the walls, etc. But he did somehow catch me pretty good at one
point and made a very impressive puncture wound in the top/front aluminum plate, just above my
Titanium plate. That's what is shown in this picture. The panel is removed from the robot
in this picture.
I have performed a post-battle inspection if you care to review it.