Servo - May 2015

28 SERVO 05.2015

are so prevalent in robot combat. Part of that is the nature of the Robot Battles open stage Sumo rule set (no weapon may have a top speed more than 20 fps because there's a kid 12 feet away — Heatherington helped with that rule).

Even his 1 lb bots fighting in "normal combat" favor flipper designs: the beautiful flywheel powered beastie, Thrasher, and the more recent cock-able spring in Dead Air. His calculators detail flywheels and spring tensions, deflection, and trajectories. There are videos of experiments detailing construction, characteristics, and results. The man is a machine-making machine. Heatherington posts his design failures, as well as his successes. He discusses why a design is a failure, and then builds on that. He tells you exactly how he's gonna kick your ... bot.

Consider the design arc for his most successful robot: 12 lb Omega Force. This self-actuating flipper powerhouse has been competing since 2006; most recently in 2014, winning the 12 lb bracket. Again. "It has the most wins and is a real crowd pleaser. They love watching bots tossed into the air and off the stage.

So do I."

It started with what he describes as his worst bot: "…. The unnamed predecessor to "Omega Force. It was an invertible rotary flipper with six wheels and hard-to-describe articulating body. When something is hard to describe, it's likely to be way too hard to build. It was. In fact, the whole idea was stupid."

Yet sooo pretty. It is complex and beautifully executed. Any geek's heart would go straight out to it. It looks hard to drive. It is very cool. It is abandoned for the real thing.

The realized version of Omega Force is the embodiment of Heatherington's design philosophy:

"Make it easy to drive and automate the weapon."

Look at the construction photos of Omega Force: a triangle shaped, fully invertible, self-firing flipper bot. This was the first appearance of the "smart wedge" which he has refined and applied in some form to all smart wedge allows a wedge to retract from an obstacle that would otherwise stop the robot. On his website build report pages, every decision is documented. The details of its design and construction are there for anyone to understand. It is precise and clean. His event reports are amusing.

Heatherington claims that there is no conscious attempt at art in his designs, but there is a sweetness of line and a lack of anything superfluous. There is definitely artistry to his fights. His driving is as precise as his construction. The combination is very effective, although he has been brought low by rubber snakes caught in his drive train. Even small bot masters can fall to silliness. SV