The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia ( www2.fi.edu) hosted its 7th annual robotic
combat event on September 21,
2013. The Institute provides the venue
arena and N.E.R.C. ( www.nerc.us)
organizes the event.
I usually bring a couple of my
bots to compete, but this year I
decided to take a break from
competing and offered to judge
instead. Competing with even one bot
ties up a lot of your time at an event
and as I usually bring two or three,
I sometimes find I miss much of the
action while I'm repairing and
recharging my bots in time for their
next fights. I was to find judging
keeps you just as busy, but at least
you don't miss any fights!
There were 26 bots this year,
fighting in five weight classes: 1 lb
Antweight, 3 lb Beetleweight, 12 lb
Hobbyweight, 30 lb Featherweight,
and 30 lb Sportsman.
The arena is provided by the
Institute, and it's a thing of beauty. It’s
built up of extruded aluminum
sections securing the Lexan walls and
roof, and has a replaceable wood
floor. The bump strips were upgraded
over last year, but I wasn’t sure they
would stand up to the fiercest 30 lber
at full cry.
The arena and the scrolling
display that I described in the February
and March 2013 issues can be seen in
Figure 1. (It’s bright!) I set it up to
show a link to the N.E.R.C. website
and display the names of the various
sponsors.
Fighting got started by about
11: 30 am after the usual last minute
builds in the pits and the safety tests.
I was kept busy setting up my Kitbots
banners and display, and setting up
Team Green Machine’s Beetleweight
Maniac Kathy (Figure 2) with a new
transmitter. Theirs had failed a couple
days before the event.
I managed to mess up the first
attempt when I forgot to set the
throttle at zero for binding. The bot
then failed safety because the RX
thought that the none-zero setting
was the fail safe position. I re-binded
(rebound?) the Rx with the throttle
set at zero. All was well and the bot
got through safety in time.
There were seven Antweights
competing, but it quickly came down
to four main combatants: Hanger 11,
a lightly armored bot with a servo
operated flipper arm (Figure 3); old
time favorite and previous champion
Poco Tambor (Figure 4) with its highly
effective drum; newcomer Dust
Pandemonium (Figure 5), which
combined the classic dustpan shape in
carbon fiber with a small high speed
(Figure 6).
Dust Pandemonium out-drove
Hanger 11 to get to the semi-finals,
but then faced what looked like a
quick death at the hands of
Gyroscopic. However, a lucky hit with
its small blade cut the o-ring belt that
drove the big beater bar, and
Gyroscopic tapped out soon after.
The Antweight finals were
between Poco Tambor who was
undefeated through the winner’s
brackets, and Dust Pandemonium who
had come up through the loser’s
brackets. Poco Tambor seemed to lose
drive early on, and his opponent took
advantage to control the fight and
win by a clear judge’s decision. Since
Poco Tambor had only lost once so
far, they had to fight again to decide
who was the champion.
In the second final, Poco quickly
knocked out the drive on one side of
its opponent but an out-of-balance
drum resulted in traction problems.
The fight went to the judges with
Poco Tambor getting the decision.
Eleven Beetleweights took part,
SERVO 01.2014 39
EVENT REPORT:
Franklin 2013 — Fall Fun in Philly
● by Pete Smith
FIGURE 3.
FIGURE 2.
FIGURE 1.