Servo - June 2008

FIGURE 7. All of the parts are mounted and Herald is ready for a test drive.

FIGURE 8. The hammer is added along with a wheelie bar and front spars.

made that could attach to the hammer arm. All of this progress is shown in Figure 8.

With the hammer complete and drive system working reliably, it was now time to make the top armor with the small amount of weight remaining. I decided to use 1/16” Lexan as the top armor for each pod. I also added some thin Lexan armor to help protect the drive motors at the end of each leg assembly. With these additions, the robot was complete.

Top Secret

Herald started out as just a fun project designed to be cheap and fun to watch. However, in the process of building it, I came to realize the true potential of the Sportsman class. Not only did it offer the chance to fight and not be completely destroyed, it allowed builders to try things that would never have been practical previously. I realized that I could use Herald as a way to promote the Sportsman class and its potential. To do this, I started a build report in the robotic online discussion forums (http:// forums.delphiforums.com/CJRC/ start). In the build report, I posted some “hints” about the design along with a few photos such as Figure 5, but I didn’t reveal what it actually was. I thought that if I created a level of interest and built up anticipation for finding out what

Herald was, I could increase its impact when it first competed. With the mystery of “What is Herald?” created and a finished robot, I set off to compete at NERC’s Motorama 2008.

I decided that I had spent the last few months hyping up Herald online, so I didn’t want to give the design away in an uneventful fashion. Instead, I kept it a secret until the very last second. So, at the event I kept it under a blanket to keep anyone from seeing it. For my first match, a friend who was in on the secret took the initiative to play the theme music from 2001: A Space Odyssey as I entered the box with the covered robot. I lifted the blanket so it was timed perfectly with the music, and after three months of secrecy, Herald was unveiled. Figure 9 shows Herald right after the unveiling, ready to pummel the opponents!

builders were asked to vote on a number of awards in different categories: best driver, most aggressive, best engineered, and coolest robot. By popular vote, Herald was lucky enough to win coolest robot. This was an honor because this award often went to rare robots such as walkers and other types whose builders didn’t just “think outside the box,” but didn’t even realize there was a box.

The competition was fierce this year with over three robots trying concepts that had never been done before. In many ways, the other robots beat Herald in their creative design concepts. I hope to see a greater number of “out of the box” bots at Motorama 2009, because Herald is only a small step in what I feel is the right direction for the Sportsman class.

For more information on myself or my robots, please visit www. Benson-Labs.com. SV

Conclusion

Herald started out as just a fun project and slowly morphed into an attempt to “build out of the box” and try to excite other builders to do the same thing. Herald had four fights at Motorama 2008, two of which it won. At the end of the competition, the