Servo - June 2012

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Featured This Month:

32 BUILD REPORT: Siafu and the Army of Ants – Part 1 by Pete Smith

34 EVENT REPORT: Happy 10th Birthday for Motorama – Motorama 2012 by Pete Smith

37 EVENT REPORT: Havoc at Harrisburg University – The 2nd Annual Downtown Dogfight by Dave Graham

42 EVENT REPORT: Gulf Coast Robot Sports Completes its 10th Event by Andrea Suarez

45 EVENTS: Upcoming Events for July

45 INTERVIEW: Tool City Robobots Leverages Combat for Learning by Chris Olin

48 The History of Robot Combat: Rise of the Insects Part 2 by Morgan Berry

49 A Decade of Robot Fighting by Andrea Suarez

51 CARTOON

BUILD REPORT:

Siafu and the Army of Ants – Part 1

● by Pete Smith

I’ve built a few Antweights (1 lb) over the years. It’s never been a weight class I was particularly interested in, but with many events only hosting Ants and Beetleweights ( 3 lb) I have built them just to make up numbers or for my (then young) son to compete with.

However, I have perhaps the singular honor of never having won a fight with one! They all performed like the ill thought-out and hastily-built machines they were. Their wheels would fall off and the speed controllers would burn out or would simply decide not to move at all once they were in the arena.

With the success that the Weta and Trilobite Beetleweight kits are having through Kitbots ( www.kitbots.com), I decided it was time to design and build a really competitive Antweight. I named it Siafu — the Swahili name for the fearsome Army ants of the genus Dorylus.

I decided my first serious Ant would be a drum bot. I’ve watched the success of Team Pneusance’s Poco Tambor and decided I wanted to build a bot as (or more) effective as that, but in a kit form that would allow others to enter the sport with an effective bot right from the start.

I design my bots in 3D using Solid Works and keep close track of the weight of all the components in a spreadsheet. The latter is very important because it’s too easy to find yourself with a bot that is overweight for a competition, or one that has an ineffective weapon or inadequate armor.

Fingertech Robotics ( www.fingertechrobotics.com) is the leading supplier for Antweight parts, and their TinyESC v2 speed controllers and Silver Spark drive motors are becoming the standards by which