RUMBLE AT THE R CK:
BotsIQ Gone Varsity
● by Michael Bastoni
The Plymouth North High and
Plymouth South High School
Robotics Teams sponsored a BOTSIQ
15 lb competition. The Plymouth
North High school engineering class,
under the direction of teacher
Michael Bastoni and welder James
Stevens, designed and constructed a
12’ Octagonal battlebox. The 1/8”
steel floor is supported by eight sections of welded 3” structural channel
aluminum frames. The walls are 5’x5’
x 3/8” polycarbonate framed by
1-1/4” aluminum square tube frames.
The roof is 3/8’ poly and aluminum
set on an approximately 1: 6 slope.
This is the first BOTSIQ arena of this
design in the country and it was
shipped to Florida and used at the
2007 National BOTSIQ championship.
The Event
and an homage to the early
days of Marc Thorpe and the
West Coast crazies who
birthed the sport. We set up
a 14’ TV screen in the
auditorium and pumped in
live video and sound from
inside the arena so folks
could sit in movie theater
comfort and hear and watch
15 lb fighting robot action,
which looked and sounded
like 300 lb combat robots on the big
screen. The live and video visual
experience was enhanced since we
shut down the room lights and lit
only the BattleBox, and pumped
amplified sound into the arena room,
as well as the auditorium. Little bots
got real big!
We had both high school and
college teams from as far away as
Florida and New Jersey.
Lara Spinelli,
driver for bot
Good Knight
of the Bergen
County
Academy
robotics team.
Following the 2007 BOTSIQ
championship, we announced the
desire to host a combat robot event
in Plymouth, MA. We were not sure
how many robots would come since
we made the announcement in the
early weeks of October 2007, listing
December 1, 2007 as the event date.
We had hoped for 6-10 robots and
expected that we could grow the
event from there. We were amazed
that 25 15 lb combat robots from 18
schools showed up ready to fight!
We had only one forfeit throughout
the whole day of combat.
The event went off without a
hitch. The arena
was set up in the
center of the manufacturing shop surrounded by lathes,
mills, and welding
equipment, a perfect place for a
combat robot event
Results
● First Place (Undefeated): “Good
Knight” from Bergen County
Technical School, NJ.
robots, and making the venue
available to surrounding teams. In
this way, engineering in general, and
robotics in particular, can become in
time varsity level competitive sports
that will rival the status of other varsity sports programs. We didn’t nail a
peach basket to an auditorium
balcony ... we built a combat robot
arena! This event will be held on a
semiannual basis, made possible
through the sponsorship of Entergy
Corporation ( www.entergy.com),
SolidWorks Corporation ( www.solid
works.com), and GEARS Educational
Systems ( www.gearseds.com).
The next Rumble at the Rock is
scheduled for March 8th, 2008. SV
● Second Place: “The Hook” from
WI.
● Third Place: “Juggernaut” from
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA.
The 12’ Octagonal arena was designed and
built by the organizers, sponsors and
students at Plymouth North High School
Engineering Program. Copies of these plans
made by Mahuta Tool Corp ( www.mahuta
tool.com) are available from BOTSIQ by
contacting Nola Garcia at nola@botsiq.org
I think the story here is the grass
roots start up. Students designing
and building the arena AND the
SERVO 03.2008 35