FIGURE 8.
Damage to
Tetanus.
vertical spinner General Disarray
(Figure 7). Tetanus won decisively
after removing most of his
opponent’s armor, but at the cost of
many of the teeth on his shell
(Figure 8).
This may have cost him first
place after facing the thick UHMW
armor on the hammer bot Mangi in
the finals.
The next major competition for
NERC is scheduled to take place
February 18–19, 2012 at Motorama
in Harrisburg, PA.
For details check out www.
buildersdb.com, the RFL http://
botleague.net, and NERC at
www.nerc.us. Come and watch or
build a bot and compete — you will
be very welcome!
You can see many of the fights
mentioned in this article on
You Tube by searching the bot’s
name and “Franklin.” SV
The new shell spinner Tetanus
put on a great show in the 30 lb
Featherweights division, including
a tough match against lethal
Photos by author and Brian Benson
( www.bensonpv.com)
EVENT REP RT:
PennBots — The Battle at Yellow Breeches
PennBots — the Robot Club of Pennsylvania — hosted their Fall
Fling on November 19, 2011 at the
Yellow Breeches Middle School in
Boiling Springs, PA. This was an
important event for PennBots in that
it was their first event advertised on
buildersdb.com. That advertising
paid off as fighting robot competitors
(Figure 1) from Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, and Virginia met to determine
who was the best in three insect
weight classes: Flea (a.k.a., Fairy) at
150 grams, Ant at one pound, and
Beetle at three pounds. Corporate
sponsors SERVO Magazine, Pololu,
Finger Tech Robotics, Grand Wing
System (GWS), and the BotBrain
Company also responded favorably
● by Dave Graham
to the advertising with generous
donations of fighting robot materials
for the winners.
The Flea competition was a
little thin — originally, six
competitors registered their Fleas,
but only three toed the line on fight
day. The fighting Fleas were my
horizontal spinner Hedgehog
(Figure 2), vertical spinner
Tomahawk (Figure 3), and Richard
Kelley’s latest Flea creation Baby
Slicer (Figure 4). Baby Slicer is built
on a custom-made fiberglass shell,
and features part of a hacksaw
blade as the spinning weapon.
Hedgehog and Baby Slicer
fought first. After a few weapon-to-weapon hits, Hedgehog cut a wire
on Baby Slicer’s weapon motor, and
then proceeded to cut both tires off
of the bot (Figure 5). Baby Slicer
then fought Tomahawk, and pretty
much the same thing happened.
Baby Slicer’s weapon motor quit
working and Tomahawk sliced off
one of Baby’s tires. At that point,
Baby Slicer tapped out. It was all
over very quickly with first place
going to Hedgehog, second to
Tomahawk, and third to Baby Slicer.
34 SERVO 02.2012
