Dumb Robot Competitions

One thing I noticed with the expensive robots at the DARPA robotics challenge is that when they fall over, they don't appear to be making any attempt to regain balance as they start to fall.

It appears that for some reason that maintaining balance doesn't appear to take a higher priority over other functions. They appear to just freeze and let gravity take over.

So in answer to 'how would you make it move?' then probably 'not like the DARPA challenge robots' as  shown here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0TaYhjpOfo 

I am probably way too late to provide answers to this question seeing it was months ago, but in my defense, I just signed up here.

50$ is fine. Specify that the exteriors of all robot warriors must be cardboard and or Styrofoam exteriors. That provides the ability for safe chunks to be removed/crunched by other bots in competition. It makes it much more fun to see damage.

It is obvious that you will need to secure an RC car for both remote controlling the machines and possible motor salvage. It is always best to seek out RC vehicles that use DC motors for spinning the wheels to provide the steering as opposed to a separate front servo/solenoid turn device. Examples include "Thunder Tumblers" type cars which are available right off the shelf for about 14$ each brand new(CVS and etc type stores). These make use of two wheel drive/steering, a simple RC transmitter and receiver that either uses 27 or 49 mhtz. These can easily be retuned to add extra frequencies if desired with a simple plastic hex tool(or a small plastic screwdriver). The motors are geared a bit, they have durable tires and are powered by 4 AA batteries(can be upgraded). The motors can be mounted on a simple frame and the extra "wheelie" tire on back can serve as a castor(skid steering). You could also use the front wheels for this purpose. These show up here and there in thrift stores and are usually broken from little play for 2$. They are really cheaply made bodies and chassis, but good for fodder. These use a full wave bridge circuit for the motor drive for direction control. Other small cheap RC cars also follow this type design and have similar attributes.For a weapon you can make a wedge shaped body, add protruding rods, spikes etc or get a second car and use the motors to spin something up.Since all this gear is low torque and fairly low speed you won't have serious danger involved for kids to play. I would probably 3D print a small chassis for the thing because I am printer guy, but you could even go very low tech and use wood etc.

Even buying 2 of the cars, you stay under 50$(if you shop careful, they are expensive on ebay(I do not know why! shipping costs perhaps mostly).

Lots of fun, easy to see some damage and throw whatever get destroyed away afterwards......But keep the RC part.

Lower tech options can be had from wired remotes and battery packs using vibrating motion from motors obtained from cassette players and small toys but they don't have great direction control and don't provide a very exciting fight. Wired robot contests are fraught with issues as wires get broken/tangled are just pretty boring, but if the spirit of the contest demands recycled parts then there is the option.You can use junk remote as a battery pack-gut them and just attach wires and switches to run the motors.

Have fun....

I could provide some photos and ideas, but do not see a provision here for it. And this thread is probably dead now anyway.

Update:

Here is a set of legs I made from the thunder tumbler toy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFx5kGWMy-s

Added some acrylic parts cut from sheet to make this and used the front tires from the car and motors from the rear.This is a lot simpler than it looks to make really.Fun for soccer robot or adding a body on top for combat.A few microswitches sense the legs for the RC to turn on and off. There are no microcontrollers etc involved, basically just parts from the car.

These legs eventually turned into my classic bipedal walker design. This is an older video-I mostly 3D print stuff like this nowadays....All still under the 50$ limit!

Hi Mark,

The threads aren't dead until nobody posts. I enjoyed your sensible and good ideas to address Karen's post. I hope some others jump in with more ideas.

John

We've made some decisions and bought so bots since this was posted, but I"ll be posting an update pretty soon to get help from all you fine people in the Community here.

Basically, we have prefabbed hearty robots and have $25 to spend on new/used parts to add a "fight" mechanism. We've decided to go Mario Kart style and put 3 balloons on each robot. Whoever pops all their opponents balloons first or has the most remaining after 2 minutes wins.

Now I just need simple ideas for balloon popping mechanisms that I can add. The controllers we bought have additional inputs so the weapons can be controlled by the remote. I was thinking a bunch of "pin" balls that I can run into their balloons, maybe with a mechanism to raise and lower them to adjust for height.

I figured I was far too late with this reply. Glad to hear you got it all worked out.

It is far from all worked out. We still need your help.

We have the bots, now we need the WEAPONS! So it'll be like Dumb Robot Competition meets Battle Bots. And this time, Heckendorn is going DOWN!

I would go with the spinning flail-Like a weedwhacker with three or so levels of height. Spin it up with a simple DC motor and just drive toward the opponent. Slices, dices, chops and make rubbery bits from balloons in seconds...Also useful to keep wild rabid weasels at bay(If you have them about).