Servo - December 2015

SERVO 12.2015 17

Dear Santa: All I Want for Christmas is a Heavy Weight Bot

● by Kevin M. Berry

The scene: A busy shopping mall, a few weeks before Christmas. A tired, but still jovial Santa grunts as a suspiciously large child plops down on his lap. “My, you’re a BIG boy, aren’t you? What’s your name?” Trying to sound young, the “boy” replies, “Santa, I’m Little Jimmy Bothead. All I want for Christmas is a heavy weight fighting robot, so I can get on that TV show and become famous and destroy other people’s bots and meet that cute girl announcer and …” “Ho, ho, hold on a minute, there, Little Jimmy,” Santa chortles. “People don’t just GET a combat bot. You have to BUILD it, if you want to have any respect among builders.” Little Jimmy — who in reality is James Ennui, a 34 year old unemployed car wash attendant — began whining like a real boy. “It’s too hard. It’s confusing. Nobody will tell me anything when I post on Facebook.” Santa, eyeing the long line building up, folds. “Okay, Jimmy, I’ll have one of my elves look into it.” So, Santa — lacking a bot cognizant elf — subcontracted the job to our own Combat Zone. Being highly efficient (a.k.a., lazy), we let a post on Facebook do most of the work.

A number of builders — some RoboGames and BattleBots™veterans, as well as less well-known builders — answered the call for their HW bot “recipe.” The lists included here are solid gold information from some of the best builders of the best bots in our sport. These lists only cover drive trains — not weapons, armor, receivers, or structure — nor the 1,549 nuts, bolts, washers, zip ties, and pieces of odd and strange things that make up a combat machine. Still, as far as a Christmas shopping list for a heavy weight, the first $10,000 is the most important! SV