EEVblog #503 - RoboWars 2013

Dave drops by the Australian RoboWars 2013 competition.

EEVblog Main Web Site:
EEVblog Amazon Store:
Donations:
Projects:
Electronics Info Wiki:

[whayden]

I'm a huge fan of battle bots as it was called over here in the states.  I was grievous when they canceled the show.  I think the next evolution of this is fully autonomous battle bots because these are merely remote control vehicles and not bots.

[HyzerGlen]

Cool vid, thanks for dropping by! :) I built hunchback. Annoyingly, it took a 5c washer to fix the valve being jammed open problem lol.

Lots of calls for autonomy but no one in 10 years has managed to build one that works even with weight bonuses (i think its 50% extra). In saying that, really looking foward to someone having a go. Making something that can do more than just line up and ram or follow a line is extremely hard without a doubt!

Anyway back to my tinkering 8)

[RobowarsAustralia]

Awesome footage there Dave, thanks for coming to the event!

[EEVblog]

Sorry, don't remember. There might an official results page somewhere.

[twkd]

Indeed! I just bought my first 2x25 a few weeks back and man is it one sweet piece of gear.

[elliott]

In the competitions they had out in California there were a few robots that were basically gyroscopes with blades on them. Some got sent flying through the air and stayed upright the entire time.

[seanet]

This was a sportsman class event. High KE Spinners will be seen at the nationals in October.

[KN]

Dave should seriously do a series building a robot. I would SO WATCH THAT.

[RobowarsAustralia]

We have an entire tutorial series on getting a working platform moving on the RobowarsNSW page, did it as part of the crowdfunding campaign that funded this event. :) It'd help guys interested in large autonomous projects too - platform is transferable between RC or Autonomous control.

[RobowarsAustralia]

You're right - half the time the controls are only tested at the last minute... the robots that win are by drivers who have done their driving practice and tweaked settings like expo and rate limiting.

[QRSClub]

Think about this. Flame throwers are allowed at some venues but generally not indoors.

[RobowarsAustralia]

Actually the rules are to immobalise your opponent, so you can flip stack or destroy to get the win. For this comp though, kinetic energy spinning weapons were banned to allow for some more creative, unusual designs like the forklift. Was only the first event of its kind ever in Aus so the bot designs will evolve I'm sure.

[TonyButchT]

Great Stuff!
I miss the similar RoboWars that was televised here in the states.

[MrJohnboyofsj]

I would be interested in making some of these myself but the wireless stuff seems expensive. I would love it if I could take the stuff right out of some old remote control cars or planes. Sadly I think the first thing to go is usually the transistor?

[KN]

Subscribed and will likely watch later in the week! Thanks for the information!

[seanet]

rules are the RFL 2010 rules. This was a sportsman event so had rules regarding high KE weapons.
In short, no, you can not use high voltage to electrically destroy opponents. (would also not be very effective against a bunch)

[didgitalpunk]

do you know if someone ever put a big gyroscope in the robot to make it harder to flip it over?

[Aleksey]

I've got into a habit of giving a like to every Dave's video before i even watched it. Because for me the number one rule is that if i don't like a video then I simply stop watching it. But these videos are to informative to me to be ignored. Thanks Dave.

[RobowarsAustralia]

The ESC's most people use do not current limit - they will smoke if current is exceeded but in a combat robot you want every last drop of power. Sabretooth and similar limiting escs have no place in such applications. We actually use 85A rated escs for these bots, from botbitz.

[MrSpck]

Where I can find some rules about weapons ?
Is it possible to use EMP coils as main weapon ? :)
They really need to apply some gyros for those devices for better direction control.