Team Solarized

[andrewj]

Anti-Spin

Team Name – Solarized
Mass – 101kg. Distribution below.
Dimensions - Height - The chassis is 7.2 Cms high, the wheels are another half CM to each end to make this an 8.2 cm robot. Length - 80 Cms, width - 30 Cms
Wheels –Set-up 1 – (Invertible) 4* 82mm diameter "sure grip breeze" wheels, used on skateboards.
Set-up 2 – (Non-invertible) 4 * 70mm diameter “sure grip breeze” wheels, this wheels are only used against spinners with blades at the right height to hit the other set.
Batteries – 6 packs of 24v 3300 GP NiMH.
Motors - 4 "Astro-Flight Cobalt 60 Robot Planetary Motor" each running at 48 volts, giving 6.4 horsepower. Motors have a diameter of ~ 5.3 cm. These motors can be run on 24 volts. At 48 volts, the cooling fans kick in, drawing air from the wheel holes to cool the motor.
Gearing - As well as the motor's gearing, we are using a simple 2:1 shaft to reduce the speed of the motor to a good level.
Weapon – The main weapon is a set of front swords, which are 2mm thick at the rear and are a tad under 0.5mm at the tip. These swords are lifted and dropped by the use of 4 rodded linear actuators. The arm itself can change in length for the battle; can be 10 cm to 50 cm. The arm can be lifted and dropped with ease, so it doesn't matter if Anti-Spin gets flipped. The good thing about this weapon is that, you can’t flip the robot by them. If a wedge gets underneath and flips the swords, the swords will lift and fire. The cool thing about these swords is that as they lay flat or at an angle, depending on which way the robot is facing, they can flip full bodied spinners because of the lack of a wedge. The swords can lift 250 kg up to 60 degree. These can’t self-right the beast.
Armour/Chassis - Hardox 600. 4mm on top and bottom to stop axes and crushers. The sides of the chassis is 11.5mm. Taking density to be 8000 kgm-3. There is 10 kg of steel bars used to strengthen up the chassis. The front and bottom plates can be removed for ease of repairs. The top and bottom sit into a groove in the robot, so that they can not be ripped away by a well aimed spinner. The chassis is the side armour, so it can't be ripped away when hit by a spinner. The front armour and rear armour are 20mm Hardox 600.
To stop the ‘bot spinning out when hit by a spinner, the outside edges are now covered with 50mm of Dyneema on top. Quote from website - “The high sonic velocity within Dyneema fibers allows local energy to be dissipated very rapidly, thus enabling the material to withstand even ballistic impacts.” The Dyneema is bolted onto the chassis itself with strong bolts.
To keep within weight, the side Hardox is covered in 10000 little 1mm radius holes at a systematic process to keep the side strong. This saves 2.9 kg
Colour – Painted Black with sliver stuff to make it look pretty.
Skirts – 2mm titanium skirts run the length of the sides, designed to fold over when invertible. The hinge is mounted in the dead centre line of the side, and the skirts are a bit longer than the height (4.5 cm) to allow then to rest at an angle. The convex sides should prevent the skirts from resting flat. Used only against flippers and not spinners.
Shape – Invertible box, slightly convex sides, and rear to stop landing onto sides/rear.
Velocity - Doing a quick calculation using the linear speed of the wheels give the top speed to be around 20 mph. This is assuming that the coefficient of friction of the arena floor is 1. The acceleration due to friction is pretty fast, compared to most vapourbots. It gets from 0 to 20 mph in a tad under 1.5 metres.
Suspension – To stop being damaged when hit by a spinner or rammer, everything is designed to move in it’s own free will. The wires are able to do this. In addition, there is an inner sub-frame of the chassis which is built for strength.
Ground Clearance – 5mm all over without skirts. At the front the swords make it zero, but no scoop to save weight. The swords are mounted at the bottom of the robot, but when flipped the swords rest at an angle to act more like a wedge. Side skirts reduce the risk of flipping, but nothing will stop those powerful flippers.
Turning Circle – Something really low, like 0.1 ìM. As this is a tiny displacement, we shall assume it’s zero.
Strength – The centre of mass of the robot is in the centre of the robot, meaning perfect handing. Armour, hard to get underneath and flip, Spinners.
Weaknesses – The torque disadvantage from the small wheels, meaning it’s going to be out-pushed. Non damaging weapon. Swords aren’t going to get robots out of the arena.

Weight Distribution
Wheels – 1.4 kg
Batteries – 10.8 kg
Motors - 4.1 Kg
Gearing - 5 kg
Weapon - 15 kg
Armour/Chassis – Total – 45.7 kg
Paint – 1kg
Electrics - (Speed Controller, Gyro, Radio control, motor cooling etc) – 6.7kg
Skirts – 1.3 kg
Suspension – 10 kg
Total – 101 kg (ok within the 1% rule)

[andrewj]

A Large Red Bus Drove My Love Away

Class - Heavyweight
Shape: Box wedge shape, with a steep wedge and round back.
Colour: White, mainly because you can’t paint Dyneema.
Velocity: 12 mph, slow compared to other rammers, but this has more control, torque, and better acceleration.
Turning Circle: Like 97% of other vapourbots, skid-steer, gives zero.
Ground Clearance: As close to zero at the front. 8mm at the sides and 15mm at the rear end.
Armour: 5mm thick Hardox 600 on the front wedge with 5mm thick Aluminium 6061 on the base plate/top plate. The sides are fixed onto the chassis, the side, and rear armour is 1mm steel underneath 6mm Dyneema.
Motivation: Four big, inner wheels that can run invertible treaded with that selo-tape stuff.
Drive: Dave has gone down the electric route with this robot, and I have chosen two B42-500 MagMotors on 60v. The motors are run on 250 C-Cell NiCad Batteries to produce the 60v needed to power the motors.
Weapons: To get it past the stupid active weapon rule, it has a really stupid weapon, which is a row of lifting spikes on the top of the robot, only 3mm tall these spikes don’t cause any harm with driving inverted, powered by cams into a Lego motor.
SRIMECH: The robot works upside down, and can be driven well by using the speed controllers invert switch.
Summary – My first main 4 wheel drive electric rammer.
Strengths: The armour absorbs the energy so that it doesn’t spin out of control when hit by a spinner. Power
Weaknesses: Can never put down all the power at once, slow compared to other rammers.

[andrewj]

Robot Name – Wedgie 5

Team Roles – Emma is the driver, Dave is on weapons, and Steve is the engineer.
Mass – 100 kg
Armour/chassis – The main different with this version is that the chassis is no longer Hardox, but now it is a 6mm Titanium monocoque, so crusher resistance. The chassis is enforced with 18mm steel triangles giving a very tough little robot. Other the titanium is a thin layer of Dyneema UD-HB (2mm) with a 1mm layer of polycarbonate on top of that. Carbon tipped spinners, eat your way though that lot .
Weapon 1 – A backward hinged LP flipper running at 145 psi (10 bars) using an 80mm ram giving about 40 big flips per fight, then it will run on for a long time for self-righting reasons. There is a 3L buffer tank, so it can fire once or twice without the buffer being needed to be fast fed (it will work faster!). These buffer tanks are right at the front of the wedge to stop the front lifting when moving. The flipper is hinged right at the top of the wedge to self-right the robot. At the front of the wedge, the flipper plate widens and runs along the ground, this piece is 2mm steel and is pointed at the front, and it is designed to get underneath full bodied spinners and skirts. However this may get damaged during the fight. The flipper is made from 18mm steel bar, reinforced with triangles and covered in a 4mm sheet of Aluminium on the top only. The steel is welded together and the cover is bolted onto the steel frame. The hinges are underneath the flipper and to stop pesky axes, the protection is a lump of 5mm steel covering the heavy duty hinge. The ram is covered by a secured net which rises with the flipper. This net can be removed if the rules state that it’s illegal. There is a flipper extension plate, now shorten than the original, but still is a good 7 CM away from the robot. This is designed to flip 200 kg without bending.
Weapon two – A 3mm Hardox front scoop, this has 2 purposes, to hold the front down and to protect the buffer tanks from axes and spinners.
Shape - Low Wedge, rounded back to self-right the robot. Rollover bars on the sides to stop it landing on its side.
Power-link position – I though I better put this in, the power-link is underneath a 5mm titanium door on the wedge located left to the flipper.
Wheel type – 2-wheel drive, using C40-500 MagMotor, on 36 volts with a 17.8:1 double stage, gearing system, the wheels are 200mm and made out of Volcalone rubber, giving grip. There is a small ball bearing at the front, which makes the front move.
Batteries – The robot is run by 4 packs of 3000mAh NiCD's @ 36 volts. This gives 12 Amps to get though the full 7 minutes of a fight.
Safety – The Co2 tank is located behind the wheels, and is easy to reach, the dump value is located near the bottom and the co2 is dumped out of the back at an angle which will not do any damage. The value is heavy duty and to reach it, you need to remove the power link to put your arm to turn it. On the other hand the value will automatic come if the pressure inside the tank gets above 1000 psi. There are failsafe lights located on the side of the machine in view of everyone, which tell the ground staff if the robot is active (all 5 lights are on). Inside the robot there is a plug and computer software tells the engineer if there is something wrong with the electrics.
Ground Clearance- At front zero, its 1 cm at the rear, and 5mm at the sides to allow for fast turning and with this in mind...
Turning Circle – Because of the ground clearance at the back, and the 2 wheel drive chassis this robot can turn on the spot. This could be a weapon against pushers, once spinning the front will lift because of the gyroscopic forces and it will become a full bodied spinner.
Speed – This version is slow compared to the 3rd version, having a maximum velocity of 9 ms-1 (~20 mph), but the cool thing is that the robot can accelerate at just under 1 g (9.6 ms-2, where g is 9.81 ms-2). So it turns and when Emma puts on the power it gets up to speed really quickly.
Colour – It is blue, the paint is about 2mm thick and has thin threads in the paint to stop some spinners ripping the pieces off.
Summary – Thanks to Aaron for the flipper and drive set-up (it hasn’t changed from version 3). This is the 4th version of Wedgie, but I though I call it version 5. Tech sheet for Dyneema UD-HB www.dsm.com/en_US/html/hpf/dozens_of_reasons.htm

If the rules request them, strengths are
• The speed of the machine
• Basically Carbon resistance
• The flipper is long-lasting
• The turning ability
• The anti-skirt and anti FBS flipper blade

Weaknesses can include
• Against high energy full bodied spinners it can be painful
• The pit
• The camera track
• SD IV
• People not reading the stats properly

[andrewj]

Flipping Mad <Back to Basics>
Mass - 96 Kg ish
Shape - Box, with skirts, and a scoped front
Colour - Blue
Speed - 15 mph
TURNING CIRCLE- 0, it uses skid steer
GROUND CLEARANCE- 5mm at rear to 0 at front
ARMOUR – 6mm titanium shell.
Skirts – Simple skirts
WHEELS- 4 wheel drive, giving power from the Bosch 750 drive at 36 volts
WEAPONS- A giant flipping arm, powered by Twin, co2 bottles for four pistons.
SRIMECH- flipper will be used to self-right it; only the front 2 pistons will have the power
NOTES- Flipping Mad Back 2 Basics, older than life, based on the very old flipping mad mark 1 chassis. Let’s see if the old dog has some tricks left in it.
STRENGTHS- 4 wheel drive, Flipper
WEAKNESSES- Very old, was around before the dawn of time.

[andrewj]

Seggy the third

Roboteers name – Emma is driver, Dave is on the weapons, and Steve is the engineer.
Mass – The chassis itself with no weapons fitted weighs in at 73 kg (give or take 0.5 kg). The heaviest weapon setup tips the scales at 100 kg.
This version of Seggy will have 9 interchangeable weapon options, these are
Weapon 1a – An invertible lifting arm, this arm is designed to work both ways around and is not designed to lift above 30 degree in either direction, as the stroke of the double ended custom piston is only 30 Cms, but with Co2, at 750 psi on the twin pistons should send a robot into the air. This system is the hardest to change, and takes about 30 minutes in real time. The co2 bottle is stored in a space in the chassis; it is removed if co2 is not needed, but not the pipe work. There is a chance that the pipe could break, however it is an ex-hydraulic ram pipes and can restand the pressure.
Weapon 1b – The original SEGv vertical drum weapon, the drum weighs 12.1 kg, and is tri belt driven using a simple ratio from a MagMotor at 36 volts. The speed at which the drum does its famous flipping routine is about 1251 rpm, so we run it at about 1250 rpm. Used mainly against skirted machines.
Weapon 1c – A horizontal spinning bar, weighing 10 kg, the motor is the same motor from the drum, but connected to the bar using 4 chains on a shaft. Runs about 2000 rpm. Used mainly against machines with exposed frame and weapons.
Weapon 1d – This weapon is a four tooth blade, running at 2000 rpm, the good thing of this blade is that it can be adjusted heights, so one fight it could be at ground level for wheels and the next fight if fixed it can be at the right height to hit something else. The system for spin is the same setup as the bar.
Weapon 1e – This is a 12 tooth blade, the same as the 4 tooth blade, but larger (5kg) compared to the four tooth’s 4 kg. It is run via the same system.
Weapon 1f – A spike, this is run at 1000 psi co2 and fires about 150 mph. The spike can fire about 20 times per fight, so it should be used wisely.
Weapon 1g – This is a passive scoop, used for 80 kg competitions. It is simple but efficient.
Weapon 1h – This is a passive scoop, used for 100 kg competitions. The scoop itself weighs 24 kg of solid steel, which will be enough to stop about 50% of spinners. The cool thing is a little flail, such as on Hurricane 2, is on the wedge to make it active. The scoop has an invertible tip on the top to make it work upside down.
Weapon 1i – This is an ‘active’ anti spinner scoop. It is designed to flex backwards with the forces from the spinner. The twin shocks are designed to be adjusted to allow for mega energy levels, at its maximum tightness the scoop can re-stand a massive 1 MJ of kinetic energy. The normal running tightness can re-stand 100 kJ, because of the smooth, oiled piston in which the main spring is stored it creates a virtually zero friction levels. Then the fun can begin, as the energy is released in what Andy said, one massive amount, pushing the spinner anti-clockwise, which in some cases will destroy the shaft. This bias to the left can be changed to the right. The centre pole is held within an oiled shaft which makes damage zero. To protect the back of the scoop and the front of the robot, there is a piece of 1cm rubber either side of the shock zone. For protection, there are torsion spring loaded side panels, which protect the inners of the scoop and flex outwards when the scoop is loaded.
Weapon 2 – 4 rear spikes, each one weighing 100 grams and are fixed. These give protection from ramming and spinners.
Weapon 3 – Wheel shields to protect the wheels from axes, these are weighed so that once flipped the shields cover the other wheels.
Can it self-right - It is fully invertible, and the wheel shields on top make hitting the wheels hard. To stop the robot ending up on it’s back and sides, a little roll-over cage is fitted.
Velocity - This version is slower than the original to aid control, the cruising velocity is 18 mph. This velocity is reached within 2 metres so this robot packs a punch.
Turning Circle – The 4 wheels use a skid-steer method. This gives a turning circle of zero mm.
Ground clearance – The ground clearance all over the machine is 20mm, this giving aid to turning, the front has an optioned wedge, which is fixed with some weapons without a scoop (drum, spinners). The skirts reduce the ground clearance to zero
Skirts – This version, I have finally got some skirts to fit against flippers and wedges. These are normal skirts, which when inverted fold back on themselves, when the electromagnet is released. The skirts hold down with a force about 2000 Newton's, meaning that I don’t normally like them, because of the added resistance and the lack of moments.
Wheel Type – This is new, 2 LEM 130’s at 36 volts, though a double chain reduction gearbox, giving overall 17.5:1 reduction. The chains themselves are protected by axes and crushers by the use of a steel protection bar. The 4 wheels are lovely go-kart wheels, solid, with added grip pads.
Body Shape: Semi-invertible box with rear spikes and side roll-over bars.
Safety – The front weapon is connected via some bolts, about 100 bolts are used to hold the front part in, and this gives strength from rammers. The power link is located at the rear between the two spikes, there is a 6mm steel sliding door covering it. The aerial is connected at the rear as well and you can pick the robot up by it. Every system is protected by fail safes.
Chassis – The robot is a 6mm steel monocoque. The chassis is enforced with 18mm steel triangles giving a very tough little robot. The first weapon will fit within a large cutout in the robot. See the picture of the chassis without weapons.
Colour: - It is a shade of yellow, with metallic threads within the paint, sprayed on to give it about 2mm of paint. When the scoops are fitted, the cutout is covered with 5mm of knitted nylon.
Batteries – The robot is run by 3 packs of 3000mAh NiCD's @ 36 volts. This gives 9 Amps to get though the full 5 minutes of a fight. There is a simple recharging battery to recharge the batteries throughout the fight to keep it going.
Summary – The third version. Hopefully it should have gotten rid of the poor drive-chain and the high ground clearance of the 2nd version. Most of the robot is the second version, but with new electrics, and drive chain.

[andrewj]

Quocunque Jeceris Stabit

A product of Team Solarized
Shape: Simple wedge, with side bumps and a curved rear.
Colour: Blue
Weapon: A Chaos 2 style flipper with rams etc, I don’t want to go into detail here, because it will make the stats long.
Armour: 5mm aluminium, with little titanium protection strips around the sides and a titanium strip, simpler to Firestorm 5 at the front.
Speed: Top speed is 25 mph, but I like it best at around 14 mph.
Weight: 96 kg
Ground Clearance: Close to zero at front, sides and rear the ground clearance is 2cm for better turning.
Motors: 2 Bosch 750’s at 24 volts.
Wheels: 2 wheels, designed to give grip on most arena surfaces.
Srimech: Flipper, at a lower pressure.
Strengths: Flipper will keep going whatever you throw at it
Weaknesses: A bit out-of-date with today’s standards.

[andrewj]

Full Name – We All Face the Same Way (it takes all day)

Shorten Name – WAFT
Mass – about 99.5 kg
Weapon –The main weapon on WAFT is the crusher, powered by hydraulics at 2500 psi. Picture 2 shows the linkage to the ram. The crusher can get down in 5 seconds flat because of the linkage. WAFT has also twin self-righter like on Wedgie; these are based into the robot and powered by a windscreen wiper motor on 12 volts. The rear spike as shown in picture 1 is just used for three purposes, 1 to put a mug of coffee on in the pits and two to ram into robots in case the crusher breaks, and thirdly so that the robot when flipped does not end up on its back, because it can not get balanced on it’s back without the self-righter getting grip on the floor.
Shape – As shown in picture 1, the shape is a long low wedge with a box end. The back is rounded with a spiked section on the rear. The front has a Hardox strip to aid getting underneath over robots.
Drive – The drive is 2-wheel drive with 2 steering wheels at the front, the drive is shown in picture 3, and is driven by two Bosch 750’s at 36 volts and with shafts and limited slip differentials. The front two steering wheels can turn to a maximum of 60 degree because of the car steering; both can turn at different angles thanks to the London taxi arms. An Electric window motor at 6 volts (sound familiar) turns each wheel and the steering is shown in picture 4.
Armour – Because of the drive and weapons the armour has been taken down, the outer armour is 3mm Ti/V alloy on top of the wedge and 5mm Ti/V on the sides and bottom. The chassis is made of 20mm steel bar section with triangular strengths.
Ground Clearance –The front is dead zero nothing can get underneath it. The sides and rear is 3mm, and there are no skirts to stop turning
Turning Circle –Because of the car style turning, this robot can turn a 360-degree turn on the spot thanks to the 4 wheels. It is like a 2 wheel drive Axlebot with a large front.
Velocity – This is the cool part, because of the shafts and motors, this robot can travel at 28 mph and turn. It gets to its top speed in 2 seconds, giving an acceleration of a cool 7 m/s/s.
Skirts – No skirts around the rear or sides.
Wheel Type – The rear wheels has special rubber pads around the outside to give buckets of grip, if grip comes in buckets. The front wheels are more spheres with fixed metal plates fixed to them to give the better turning.
Colour: The robot is an unpainted to save that little bit of weight.
Dimensions: Length is 637mm from tip of spike to wedge. The width is 302mm in the widest point. The height of WAFT from the top to bottom is 305mm. All the motors and electrics can be removed within 10 minutes because the whole robot is very low tech. This means that damage can always be fixed and if the rules allow, interchangeable weapons to be put in place.
Summary – I needed a crusher robot, and so after much though in the library at college drawn a proto-type and using the strengths from SEGv and Wedgie, managed to get this ultra-tough robot. This robot will be the base for my new modular robot coming soon.
Strengths – Crusher, speed, size, unpainted so it could be hard to see in a grey coloured arena. Will always self-right
Weaknesses – Unpainted so it could be hard to see in a grey coloured arena, slow crusher, very low tech.
Random Fact – Hasn't had a fight, 10 months old

[andrewj]

Project "4WS"
Main Aim - Design a robot with 4 wheel drives with only 1 motor, hydraulic steering, and 4 wheel locking.
Name - 4-Wheel-Steering (4 WS for short)
Team – Driver is Emma, Weapons is Dave and engineer is Steve
Shape – Front scoop, designed to take spinners, curved sides to act like a roll-cage.
Chassis - Simple box chassis, allowing the wheels full movement with protection. Should provide protection, with the side plates at 5mm Landrover grade Aluminium. Very strong, but light, and because there is a lot of Landrover around, it is very easy to come by. The top armour is the same 5mm, but this time it can be removed for access to mend the robot. The base plate is the same, so is the rear and front wedge. Over the wheels on the top is another layer of 5mm aluminium.
Weapon - Electric lifting arm to self-right, designed to lift the robot over only. This is the self-righter.
Motor - B42-500 MagMotor at 60 volts, run straight into a high-low transfer box. This will be able to get 2 shafts come out of the box, 1 going to the front, and 1 going to the rear. The shafts lock into non-locking diffs. Shafts come from these and connect via a joint (allowing full movements).
Locking System - All 4 drive shafts have a locking feature, which locks the wheel. This allows the robot to turn on the spot and get out of very sticky areas.
Steering - All 4 wheels can move 35 degree either way, all impendent. This once more adds to the "Stick it where you want" feature of 4WS. The steering is all powered by low pressure hydraulics.
Processor – An on-board processor controls all the steering and locking. The speed is 100 time per second, allowing for near instant sticking where it’s got to go. The controller on the control is a wheel to steer and a level to add power. Another button allows reverse to be selected, where the gearbox connected to the motor before the transfer box (simple forward/reverse method) can spin the output shafts to make the robot go in reverse.
Wheels – 4 go-kart solid tyres.
Ground Clearance – Front end because of the scoop it’s 1mm, otherwise it’s 1cm for turning.
Mass – 100 kg
Velocity and Acceleration – 20 ms-1, getting to it within 2 metres on high-range. 10 ms-1, getting to it within 2 metres on low-range.
Strengths - Control, turning, speed.
Weaknesses – no damaging weapons, high ground clearance, Provides a reason to justify Kustom.