Rolling Thunder has a solid rep in
the community for service and
quality, and Pete did fight Weta,
God of Ugly Things at Moto (see
companion article, “Reversing The
Trend”), so I feel pretty comfortable
endorsing these mounts without the
usual body of combat data to back
them up. I welcome feedback from
folks who use these. SV
B- 16 mounts.
Beetlemotor1.
RioB tz Combot Tutorial
Summarized – LaunchBots
● Original Text by Professor Marco Antonio Meggiolaro, Summarized by Kevin Berry
Professor Marco Antonio Meggiolaro, of the Pontifical
Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, has translated his popular
book — the RioBotz Combot Tutorial
— into English. Last fall, SERVO
summarized Chapter 3, “Materials,”
focusing on commonly used
materials for combat bot building.
This month, we attempt to do
justice to a portion of his exhaustive
chapter on weapon design. Chapter
6 — “Weapon Design” — is a college
level textbook on the design and
operational theory of today’s
combat weapon systems. In this
article, we present a much simplified
version of the “LaunchBots” section
of this chapter. Marco’s book is
available free for download at
www.riobotz.com.br/en/tutorial.
html. For hard copy purchase (at no
profit to Marco) go to Amazon,
published by CreateSpace. All
information here is provided
courtesy of Professor Meggiolaro
and RioBotz.
Launcher Design
pressurized at 1,000 psi would
accelerate a 220 lb mass with
an average power of about
566 HP!
Of course, this power is
only delivered during a very
short time. However, a lightweight electric motor or
internal combustion engine
cannot supply this unless, of
course, the motor is used to
store kinetic energy in a flywheel
during a few seconds with an
ingenious and very strong
mechanism that suddenly transfers
this energy to the launcher arm — as
done by Team Whyachi’s Warrior
SKF robot (Figure 1). Such a sturdy
mechanism is not simple to build.
Hydraulic systems are not good
options either for launchers. They
can deliver huge forces and
accelerations, but their
top speed is relatively
low.
Most launchers try
to either maximize the
height or the range of
the throw. “Height
launchers” try to launch
the opponent as high
as possible and try to
flip it while causing
damage when it hits
the ground. “Range
launchers” try to launch
FIGURE 1
the opponent as far as possible —
not necessarily high — trying to
throw it out of bounds to the arena
dead zone.
Three-Bar Mechanisms
A very popular launcher design
uses a three-bar mechanism. The
“three bars” are the pneumatic
cylinder, the main structure of the
Launchers need to deliver a
huge amount of energy during a
very brief time. Because of that,
they’re almost invariably powered by
high pressure pneumatic systems. A
4” bore cylinder with 8” stroke
FIGURE 2
SERVO 05.2010 31
