EVENT REP RT:
Mecha-Mayhem – The Rumble in Rosemont
● by Dave Graham
Fighting robot enthusiasts from Miami to Michigan and their 47
insect class fighting robots
journeyed to the Chicago suburb of
Rosement, IL to do battle in the 5th
Annual Mecha-Mayhem fighting
robot competition. Mecha-Mayhem
is the flagship event for the Chicago
Robotic Combat Association (CRCA),
and features two days of robot
destruction in a state-of-the-art
arena that sports arena hazards in
the form of four pneumatically
operated hammers in the arena
corners.
Event organizers Brian Schwartz
and Dave Miller partnered with the
iHobby Expo to add this combat
robot event to the venue. The
iHobby Expo is the largest trade and
consumer hobby show in the United
States, and provides an international
showcase for the newest electronic
hobbyist technology, models, and
valued miniature collectables.
Mecha-Mayhem 2011 drew
nearly double the competitors from
previous years. Those competitors
included several new teams, most
notably Team Busted Nuts from
FIGURE 1. Team
Busted Nuts (from
left to right - Andrea
Suarez, Michael
Gellatly, Paul Grata,
and Jennifer Villa).
Miami, FL (Figure 1). The Busted
Nuts team members are veterans of
the high school Bots IQ competition
and are used to building 120 pound
fighting monsters. This was their
first foray into insect class fighting
robots, and their first road trip to a
competition. They brought an
impressive collection of well-designed, durable Flea (a.k.a.,
Fairy), Ant, and Beetleweight bots,
and established themselves early on
as the team to beat.
FIGURE 3. Group shot
of Fleaweight bots.
I need to give a shout-out to
Michael Winek from the American
Society of Mechanical Engineering
(ASME) Washington University
team. While Michael didn’t attend
the competition, he designed an
impressive mega charging station
(Figure 2) for his ASME teammates.
The Fleaweight competitors
definitely raised the bar this year,
assembling the largest group of
bots with the most diverse
weaponry I’ve ever seen. Eleven
Fleas (Figure 3) sporting horizontal
spinners, wedges, vertical spinners,
a spinning drum, a lifter, and yes, a
full-body spinning Melty Brain bot
FIGURE 2. Washington University ASME Team
mega charging station.
30 SERVO 01.2012
