Servo - July 2015

or driver. For that, you’ll have to tune into the show. However, we can tell you that this mean machine uses multiple “short” AmpFlow A28- 150 24 volt neodymium magnet DC motors to drive its wheels, and a “long” AmpFlow A28-

400 24 volt PMDC motor to drive a wide belt that spins something at the front end.

Once the tournament has been televised, we’ll be able to provide more details about which robots competed, how well they did, what parts they used, what worked, and what didn’t.

Please Show Me at Least One Robot?

Since you asked nicely, we’ll show you an inside view of one of the crowd favorites from the May 2002 BattleBot competition, Warhead.

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Marc DeVidts (far left) works on his robot while Trey Roski (left), founder of BattleBots escorts some VIPs through the pits.

A Drone’s Eye View

The dilemma of watching or televising a fight between two destructive robots is how to see what the robots are doing without being in harm’s way. The solution has always been thick sheets of polycarbonate that are mostly clear and impervious to projectiles large and small.

However, even brand new polycarbonate creates reflections and warps the view.

For BattleBots 2015, DJI provided two of their Inspire 4K camera drones and technical support to get a truly new perspective on each fight.

Michael Shabun of DJI Technology, LLC gave me a close-up look at the carbon-fiber technology and tiny built-in camera that records 4K video on a microSD card during flight.