Sadly, I wasn't able to fix all of the flaws (a tendency to explode being the primary one) in my robot, "Footloose", so we won't be competing. However, I'm here at UIUC to cheer on my son Justin and my bouncing 1-lb grand-bot, "Singularity," (pictures below) as well as his team's 30 lb bot "Collosal Avian." The tournament is livestreamed ("Live" link at the "Robobrawl UIUC" YouTube channel) if you want to check it out.
Here's a video clip from a fight with an interestingly designed bot. The larger of the two bots has a bristle bot locomotion system, with metal bristles and vibration for propulsion, and gets a 50% weight bonus as a "shuffler." It steers with its weapons system, which consists of two side-by-side horizontal spinners. By varying the relative spinner speed, it generates force to the right or left, though it can't travel backwards.
@geekmomprojects that’s slick - is the vibration a dedicated eccentric cam or weight distribution in the spinners? Definitely worlds deadliest toothbrush 🤣
Another 1-lb match clip from the Livestream. This was the end of a very slow moving match. The blue/white bot was literally held together with duct tape. At the end the larger black shuffle bot quite literally pulled the taped cover off to end the match. https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx7prGhDSdvv-87nARrusTObXVA-6GEyNh?si=n5O3QQKBFH9uaoAJ
The downside of the enclosed combat arena is the challenge of clearing out the smoke. Still waiting at a distance for them to bring in the giant fans to air it out.
Here's the bristle bot's (named Surface Charge) second match against a novel vertical ring spinner bot. I was watching while filming so the camera slips upwards a bit, but you can see the devastating force of Surface Charge's weapons in the final hit.
My son's bot, a compact full-body spinner named "Singularity" went up against a Pac-Man themed horizontal spinner. Singularity performed well but lost. It's hard to keep a full body spinner stable, and there were some issues. Still, it is an ambitious, well executed design, and I'm super proud of Justin's work. The tournament is double-elimination, so Singularity will fight again.
The 1.5 lb full-body spinner (Wayward) which lost to Pac Your Bags (Pac-Man themed horizontal spinner) locomotes (awkwardly) with a single shuffle drive at its center, which pivots to let it turn. Not sure how it works mechanically, but I hope to find out. The full two minute match is below.
@geekmomprojects I love this bout, it's a smörgasbord of weird rotation effects: Pac Your Bags gyroscopic influence on steering, angular momentum transfer on solid hits, Wayward's worsening wobble
Here's a snippet from a fight between a cute duck-shaped bot, whose orange bill is a horizontal spinner, and a vertical spinner whose weapon is jointed in the middle to become narrower and longer the faster it spins. The duck lost an eye early on and ultimately lost the match in a judges' decision, but looked cute doing it.
@geekmomprojects Back when I was making bots at UIUC (20 years ago now), it was just a lexan wall around the perimeter. Of course, the competition at the time (Jerry Sanders Design Competiton) wasn’t combat-focused, it was about task completion. But that didn’t stop people from fitting offensive weapons, and they had a free-for-all at the end…
Got a chance to talk with the designers, super nice students from Purdue who were happy to talk to us about the bot. The vibrations which propel it are all from the weapons motors which spin in the same direction as each other. As a "shuffler" it gets a 50% weight bonus. Each spinner has steel "teeth" which get embedded in the 3D printed weapon by stopping the print partway. The bristles are angled to point backwards so they let the bot slide forward but resist sliding backwards.
@geekmomprojects Bummer you won't be able to compete. It was fun last year following your "completely out of my element" posts. Best of luck to your son and "grandbot"
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