BATTLE #2: CSM ROBOTICS RUMBLE 3.1
[01/29/2005]
The CSM Robotics 3.1 Robot Rumble takes place tomorrow, Sunday, January 30, 2005. I have
made a few modifications to the robot in preparation for this and future events, so the
beast is ready to go. However, I will be removing the base plate in the morning before
the event to take a stab at milling out some of the material to make the robot lighter
(so that it officially qualifies as a 12-pound bot). This is not so important for this
event, but it will be important for ROBOlympics in March. This is about the only opportunity
I will have before then to make this modification.
Speaking of modifications, I have made a few already. For starters, I spent a bit over 90 minutes
today putting new skin on the Wedge. I think the white skin had a more convincing effect as
far as the marble texture goes, but the green skin is very cool. It looks like camouflage. You
can also see that I eliminated the straight solid-wire antenna (and its vulnerable mount) and
replaced it with a simple piece of steel stranded wire. I didn't take any pictures of the
modification, but what I did was mount the whip antenna assembly on a small bracket inside
the bot, near the outer shell, and replaced the rigid whip wire with the more flexible green wire.
A close-up shot shows more of the external antenna detail. I drilled a small hole near the lip
of the upper armor panel for the wire to feed through. Then, in the hole where the whip antenna
assembly used to mount, I inserted a bolt to protect the antenna wire from getting sheared off.
This will hopefully stop any would-be attacker from climbing up the side panel and pinching off
the wire under the lip in the armor. I inserted the bolt from above, thinking it would be easier
to remove (i.e. replace) if it gets bent.
Another serious modification I made was to construct a much smaller main power switch. This was
an effort to shave off a couple of ounces from the total weight. Unfortunately, I did not take
any pictures of the power switches to show the drastic comparison. However, one additional feature
I added to the power switch was an LED. When the power is turned on, the switch housing lights
up red, so I have a visual indication that the power is, in fact, on. That's the red glow that
can be seen in this image.
[01/30/2005]
The rumble took place today and the Wedge of Deception rose to the occasion once again. While I was laying in bed last night, I decided I didn't want to cut up the base plate, because I thought I might eventually bump WoD into the 30-lb. weight class by adding the spinning weapon I originally envisioned. Instead, I decided to replace the base plate entirely. In the end, this accomplished my objective of bringing WoD officially into the 12-lb. weight class. The official weigh-in puts WoD at 11 pounds, 13.6 ounces. It's now 2+ ounces underweight!
Here you can see the bottom of the robot with the new base plate installed. As you can see, I
merely cut it to the size of the internal frame. This leaves the wheels exposed and slightly
more vulnerable, but they're far enough under the armor housing that their chances of getting hit
by anything are extremely low. You can also see a big square hole in the rear portion. This was
removed to eliminate weight, as there is nothing (except my extended battery pack) located within
that compartment.It is actually possible now (though difficult) to get to the wheel height adjustment bolts without removing all the armor paneling. However, I didn't realize this until after I made an adjustment to the wheel height. WoD got hung up on uneven flooring in one of its first battles, so I had to drop the wheels down again. I need a more reliable setup, since the wheels seem to keep getting bumped up inside over time, causing the robot to bottom out.
Here is WoD in its pristine form before its first battle of the day. I don't remember who I went
up against, first. But in one of the early rounds, I went up against T-34 Jr. (sorry, I didn't
get a picture), and the Tasmanian Devil (in the picture, below). T-34 Jr. has a penumatic flipper,
and it was actually able to get up under me once from the side and flip me up. It didn't flip me
all the way over, but it was a blow to WoD. I think it was that battle where it got hung up on
the floor, because I remember being worried that Tasmanian Devil might come up
from behind and give the aluminum armor a good smack while I was a sitting duck.
Fortunately, that didn't happen.
I was in a couple of battles with this guy. This is the Tasmanian Devil. I seemed to be having
some odd interference problems, but that may be because the opposing team strung an antenna across
the ring to improve the range of the toy radio they were using. But all in all, I think I won the
fight. I was able to get under them and push them around (into walls and such), and I wound up
breaking one of their battering bits (whatever they are called). That team has another bot
called Impedamenta that weighs in over 50 lbs and has a pneumatic flipper on it. Just for fun, I
went up against that (as the last battle of the day) and I gave them several opportunities to flip
me (and flip me they did!). They even got in a few flips, unexpectedly! If I learned anything, I
learned that WoD can take a serious beating and keep going (good), and that it is vulnerable to
flippers (bad).
This is the robot whose name I can never remember. Last time, they had some kind of steel blade
on top that I pretty much disabled in one battle by scooping them up and running them into the
wall (between a wall and a big drill press, actually) while their blade was still spinning. This
time, they showed up
with an immensely beefed up rotating mechanism that looked more evil than before. I think "Blade
of Doom" was part of the robot's name. However, I did not get to fight this robot, as they had
some technical problems (including melting the casing off the weapon motor!) and were disabled
before I had a chance to go into the rink with them.UPDATE: The name of this robot is Crazy Larry.
I also went up against SparBot (again, no pictures), but something happened and SparBot stopped
working. In the end, WoD performed pretty well and took some scratches (mostly from the last
round with the 50-pounder), although steering seems to be a bit squirly. I don't know if it is
because I push the sticks harder on the transmitter during the heat of battle than I do when I
test drive it, or if it is because of radio interference, or what...but I need to figure it out.
I need to make some adjustments to the transmitter settings. I am finding that I also would
really like to have a charging jack on the bot somewhere so I can recharge the batteries without
having to remove any armor.
There are a few things to note that came to mind during this event that I am putting on my list of things to improve:
- Add a charging jack - include temperature sensor for Triton charger
- Implement a more reliable wheel height adjustment and make it easy to get to
- Original base armor can be used for future 30-lb configuration with weapon
- Play with transmitter settings to get more stable control at full speed
- Get suction cup gripper from Harbor Freight for easy bot pick-up
- Make or find some kind of keyring or container for power on/off tools
- Make sure I have extra bolts to use as "gliders" on the base plate (where are they?)
- There's got to be an easier way to mount the base plate (two of the nuts are very hard to get to)