PennBots
Is Alive and Well!
by Dave Graham
www.servomagazine.com/index.php?/magazine/article/august2011_Graham
PennBots — the Robot Club of Central Pennsylvania, located in Boiling Springs —
partnered with Harrisburg University and the National Electronics Museum this
spring to bring both fighting and maze solving robot competitions to these two
new venues. You can follow PennBots on their website at www.pennbots.org.
Downtown Dogfights
Robot enthusiasts converged at the Harrisburg
University campus on March 26th for the first “Downtown
Dogfight” and maze solving robot competitions. The
fighting robot competition drew local competitors, as well
as participants from both upstate Pennsylvania and upstate
New York. Seven competitors (Figure 1) and their 14 Insect
Class fighting robots competed in the 150 gram Flea (a.k.a.
Fairy), one pound Ant, and three pound Beetle weight
classes. The PennBots arena with its two open pit hazards
proved to be a challenge for all drivers.
Bill Bechtel took first place in the Flea weight with his
four wheel drive bot Flee Wee (Figure 2); Kyle Singer
dominated the Ant class with Fangus (Figure 3); and the
youngest competitor, Nick Barber — a member of the
Boiling Springs Middle School Robotics Club — won the gold
in the Beetle weight fights with his hacked RC toy robot
Demonator (Figure 4). The complete list of winners is
shown in Table 1.
FIGURE 1.
FIGURE 5.
FIGURE 2.
42 SERVO 08.2011
FIGURE 3.
FIGURE 4.
