During the height of the popularity of BattleBots I desperately wanted to build my own robot and compete. So I teamed up with a friend to design a robot that we would take to the arena. This comes from late grade school circa the year 2000.

We had a few ideas that had different destruction mechanisms. This first model here uses a combination of spikes to look tough and a spatula like flipper to launch enemies. The drive train consists of two motors, one driving each side of the robot. It steers like a tank . We wanted it to be as simple as possible so the least amount of things could go wrong should hit be taken in an unexpected fashion.       The robot also has an iron skirt that keeps other robots from getting under it and lifting it into one of the traps in the arena.

The second model would grab the enemy using a big claw in the front. The main method for wining with this robot is to drag the enemy to one of the arena traps. Should the traps be to difficult to get to it also had a spiky fist in the center of the claw. The spiky fist would try to puncture the enemy and destroy important inner components. Admittedly it is a little dull on the outside, it could definitely use some spikes.       This robot has the same tank like drive train style as the first example.

The third robot has a good destruction mechanism that in my opinion is poorly implemented. There is a whacking stick in the center of the robot that given the opportunity will strike the bottom of the enemy robot where it is presumably most vulnerable. Where it goes wrong is there are too many spikes. The spikes make it very hard to get an enemy on top of this robot. Better implementation would be in a robot that is completely smooth and rounded on the outside so that the enemy can easily get on top.

Copyright, Brian De Vitis, 2011       Contact Me at bdevitis@live.com