Servo - March 2010

FIGURE 2. Touro 2006.

Back then, Brazilian competitions were very different from today. Most robots weren’t powerful enough to inflict any major damage on adversaries. The rivalry was very intense, not only among teams but also between the various states around Brazil. The cheering was sometimes too passionate, resembling a street fight crowd. A few teams insisted on covering their robots in the pits (as if, during the competition, there would be time for competitors to modify their robots to take advantage of any obvious weak spots). The competition was fun, but there was not too much sharing of information.

Things changed after Paulo and Thacia, the organizers of Brazil’s largest combat event (the Brazilian equivalent of Dave and Simone), attended RoboGames 2005. They had a wonderful experience — completely different from the Brazilian events back then. Not only were the combots more powerful and destructive, but the builders were much more mature and friendly. Paulo and Thacia gathered a lot of information about building combots and pit etiquette, and shared it with the Brazilian community on their return.

They also shared several videos from RoboGames 2005 which inspired many teams to attend the event the following year (especially our own RioBotz). But the combat videos were scary! Most Brazilian robots were not even close to that level! Our relatively unstable middleweight spinner Ciclone would be flipped over for sure against any well-built wedge, and its 1/4” thick, low-grade aluminum structure would be cut like butter by powerful spinners.

This was when there was a huge upgrade in the RioBotz robots. RioBotz had been winning most Brazilian events with a middleweight robot that was not invertible and whose weapon energy was the same as the one from our current featherweight. We were lucky – we never had any major damage inflicted on us. In fact, you only learn your robot’s limits when something breaks. Our spinning bar broke once in Brazil, which led us to improve the weapon system. Unfortunately, our armor was still lousy by RoboGames standards. To change that, we started designing Touro in late 2005. It would be an invertible middleweight combot with a powerful spinning drum. We also designed and built our first beetleweight combot, Mini Touro, to compete at RoboGames 2006.

Our sponsors didn’t have the money to send the team to RoboGames 2006, so all the students who attended had to pay for their own ticket and hotel room. This is pretty much how it still is today, since it’s not cheap to compete overseas – but