THE EVENTS
Disgruntled Chef ...
ComBots Feathweight - Disgruntled Chef
Our featherweight combot, Disgruntled Chef, is by far
the team's most worked on bot. Chef is built from scratch,
and together we've spent well over 100 man-hours on his
design and fabrication. Despite all that work, there were
some design flaws we were aware of from the start that
hurt our ability to compete in the tournament. Though the
structure was very sound and the critical electronics were
very well protected, Chef simply didn't have any way to
cause real damage to other robots. We ended up getting
flipped upside down and incapacitated in our first round
by Shaka, and then lost to Pinball in a judge’s decision in
our second round — eliminating us from the tournament.
Despite our quick elimination, it was a great learning
experience for us, and in many ways our design was very
successful. Despite its lack of aggressive capability,
Disgruntled Chef was extremely defensive. During those
two fights and several exhibition (for fun) matches, we
Chariot of Fire
sustained no significant damage. Now all we need is a
sledgehammer of doom!
LEGO TubePush - Chariot of Fire
LEGO TubePush is an event in which LEGO robots
must move empty toilet paper tubes through a maze and
into a finishing zone. Our robot, Chariot of Fire, was
originally designed to compete in the LEGO Sumo event*,
but due to limited resources (I only have so many LEGO
kits!), we used the same chassis to compete in the LEGO
TubePush event. Chariot of Fire was programmed the
morning of the event due to time constraints, and
managed to finish in second place, bringing us home a
silver medal!
*Due to a mishap, we were unable to compete in the
LEGO Sumo competition this year, so this was one of our
four entries that was ready, but didn't make it.
’Gellan
Open Linefollower - 'Gellan
'Gellan was built for fun and as an engineering
challenge. We wanted to create a LEGO bot that moved in
a unique way by segmenting the front from the back,
creating something like a trailer. It was a great design, but
unfortunately was a bit too twitchy for the big 90 degree
turn on the line following course, and wasn't able to
complete its run.
Tabletop Navigation - 'Gellan
Tabletop Nav is a unique challenge since it's very open-ended and more about creativity than specific
performance, unlike other events. The challenge this year
was to push a block into a shoe box at the end of a table
without falling off the table, and in the coolest way
possible. 'Gellan strutted its stuff across the table and into
the shoe box, bringing home a bronze for the team.
LEGO Open - ATR
ATR (short for All-Terrain Rover) was a tank-like robot
that Jason built to compete in the LEGO Open. It was a
very cool design (reminiscent of a packbot), and was
capable of traversing over a shoe box which was quite
impressive given its size. ATR took home a glorious gold
medal for the team which we were all very happy about!
SERVO 07.2010 35
