Servo - May 2015

Winter was doing its best again to make life tougher on the East coast, but fortunately it did not have the same effect at Motorama (organized by NERC; www.nerc.us) as it had last year when only two-thirds of the competitors made it. The roads were clear and even the record cold ( 2°F on Friday night) could not keep us away.

There were 120 bots registered, and

114 passed safety and competed. This was about twice the number at 2014, and the highest number in years.

We travelled up on Friday afternoon and evening, so missed most of the Antweight and Fairyweight competition, but with 30 Ants (only 11 last year) fighting, we were in time to catch the last couple of bouts despite arriving at 9: 30 pm.

The losers semi-final was a repeat of last year’s finals: Low Blow (Figure 1) versus Algos (Figure 2). This time, however, Algos won decisively and moved on to the finals against POW (Figure 3).

The small arena used for the Ant and Fairyweights has a steel floor, and POW took advantage of this by having powerful magnets keeping its wedge hard against the floor and giving it much better grip than most competitors. Algos and POW had fought earlier, and POW had won by a judge’s decision as Algos simply couldn’t get under his opponent’s wedge. The final was very different, however, with Algos dealing out repeated big hits and making it easy to declare him the winner. One curious thing was the way that POW did not bounce when landing….the strong magnets instantly gripped the floor. The picture of Klazo in Figure 4 (who finished in fifth place) shows the kind of damage bots had to endure. The main event got started on Saturday, and so did the snow. There were a couple of changes this year in how the event was recorded and displayed. The usual arena side camera was used, but that left a small blind-spot in front of the judges. This year, a motion activated web cam (Figure 5)