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GeekMomProjects

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.

Clip from the Livestream showing a 30-lb bot getting hit into the ceiling (hard). Apparently when the tournament first started years ago, the arena had no ceiling, which presents obvious problems. youtube.com/clip/UgkxxDw1w4kVM

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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. youtube.com/clip/Ugkx7prGhDSdv

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The first post-lunch 30-lb combat bot match ended with an arena-clearing LiPo fire. Clip of the fatal shot here: youtube.com/clip/UgkxVVXaJlAKa Will go back inside once it clears out

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.

This 30-lb match also ended in less than 10 seconds because one of the competitors destroyed itself immediately before its opponent had a chance to touch it: youtube.com/clip/UgkxqV5_pbsZb

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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.

Combined video of two very short one-pound fights demonstrating that the match stops immediately once a bot's LiPo battery gets exposed.

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.

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.

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 I feel like a tendency to explode might be a plus in a fighting robot.

@smellsofbikes yes, fair. My mistake was testing it before the competition.

@geekmomprojects a tendency to explode shouldn't be a stopper. all the best robots explode at least once during their lifetime :)

@geekmomprojects that’s slick - is the vibration a dedicated eccentric cam or weight distribution in the spinners? Definitely worlds deadliest toothbrush 🤣

@gadgetoid I was wondering that myself. Gonna try to ask the owner to find out and will report back

@geekmomprojects hahaha that is as genius as I expected! One of those things that makes so much sense in retrospect but I’d never have thought of it.

@gadgetoid I wouldn't have either, the designers said they came up with the idea themselves, and their execution is beautiful.

@geekmomprojects The “oh no not again” was *chef’s kiss*

@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

It's got it all!

@SnoopJ yep, you never know how they're going to turn out!

@geekmomprojects I've never watched battlebots with printed bots before. There's so much carnage, it's incredibly exciting!

@ipsquiggle it really is a great spectator sport. The requirement that the bot be mostly 3D printed, with only a few exceptions (e.g. 50% of the weapon weight must be 3D printed from PLA, ABS or PETG, but the rest of the weapon can be metal) lowers the barrier to entry, and allows entrants to be competitive with a relatively inexpensive robot.

@geekmomprojects Good policy! Saw this in Brisbane a few years ago; the whole stadium had to be evacuated.

@geekmomprojects Russian sailor: “Captain frightened the americans out of the water!”

@geekmomprojects
Something about scaling up a bristle bot like this makes me super happy haha. The steering system is super neat too, what a clever design!

@ipsquiggle yes, I thought so too. It was slow moving, but pretty effective.

@ipsquiggle yes it is! The rules state that the weapon must be 50% 3D printed material by weight but not what fraction of your bot's weight can consist of the weapon.

@geekmomprojects Google eyes!!!😍
Seems they used fpv drone motors or similar?

@brokenminded yes almost all kinetic weapons in the 1lb not division are powered by brushless drone motors.

@geekmomprojects “The Ubot-Hai were armoured only on the front, as reminder that they would never run from an enemy”