I am Alasdair, the captain of the team. We fight remote control robots like those in robot wars. We also build autonomous micromouse robots that solve mazes.
Feel free to browse the website, have fun!
22.5.10- Reading Robot Club 21. I entered TruANT (with two discs finally). He performed very well, being the last spinner standing and was knocked out in the quarter finals. His spinners caused some serious damage! DisobidiANT won best looking robot, and TruANT got the most unusual robot award.
6.3.10- Website put up
21.3.10- Reading Robot Club 20 was yesterday. I entered my new spinner robot, TruANT. I have put his specifications in the 'Robots' section.
22.5.10- Just returned from Reading Robot Club 21. I entered TruANT with his ti spinner (one was not on). MANTis won: 2nd Full combat, 2nd speedway, 1st football (along with Joey Mcconnel's Jigsaw IV) best engineered, and I won best driver!
19.7.10- We have started work on our new Ant, FrANTic. He is a very low, 4 wheeled pusher. Also, we are making a slide-rail for the flipper on DisobidiANT, making it more stable, and we are moving the wheels back, centering the gravity so it is stable, and will not buck.
19.9.10- Richmond Fighting Robot Club Was Yesterday. TruANT Took a bashing, with one of his spinner motors siezing up, and his speed controller terminal ripping off! MANTis did well, coming 1st in 'Death Ball' and Getting to the semi-finals! He also got 3rd in the assault course. I won Best driver! Got all parts for FrANTic ready to start building!
2.3.11- Hi guys. It has been a long time since I have updated the site! Well, I have finished FrANTic and all the bots are up and running. I have also made a new design for DisobidiANT. He has a fully aluminium body and a slide rail flipper. He cannot get stuck on his back anymore and cannot buck!
Name- MANTis
Class- Antweight
Drive- 2x Micromotors
Power- 2x Lithium Polymer Cells
Receiver- Hitec Micro 5s
Weapon- Claw
Weight- 151g
Wheels- Pololu 37mm White
Status- Running
Notes- Has a custom arm for the football competition at Reading Robot Club
Build Summary-
The initial design for MANTis was going to be a clamper, with a lifter and a grabber. The idea of this is to gain a grip on the opposing robot, and lift them into the air. This design was scrapped in the end, as it was difficult to get decent servoes that were able to lift 150g, while trying to get them, and good armour inside the weight limit. We did not plan to build him as a crusher, it just kind of went with the flow. When we were building MANTis' body, there was a rule in place stating that consistent metal armour must not cover more that 1/3 of the robot's perimeter. To fit around this rule, we made a simple base of polycarbonate, and constructed a bracket from bent aluminium sheet. This was bent from the base of the robot, around the back, and then over the top. This also served as a bracket to hold the servo. We then made a scoop out of carbon fibre, which bolted to the bracket, and was then glue with Uhu Por adhesive to the front. We then had the task of constructing the claw. When I was in my room one day, trying to think of ideas, I spotted my massive crate of lego out of the corner of my eye. I rootled around in there, and found a Bionicle claw perfect for the job. We cut the front off, and screwed an aluminium tip to it. We then attached to a servo horn. We went to Our second competition, with MANTis running well. I found that the carbon fibre was stronger than i thought, and managed to win a fight against Peter Waller's Combatant, who was armed with a nasty vertical blade. In mid competition, we made a front skirt from carbon fibre (after a confirmation from the judges).
After the competition, i had only found one problem with MANTis- He could not self right. We solved this proble by adding a piece of carbon fibre to the back of the claw. I had got some cool stickers knocking about in my room, and put some on. After a while, we decided that a good add on to MANTis would be to make a special football arm for the RRC football competition. The idea is, that two robots are in a team, and have to try to push a golf ball through the opposing team's goal. I found a practice golf ball, made from hollow plastic. With help from the cooker, we melted a half of one of these over a real golf ball, to get a tight fit. We attached this to another bionicle arm, and were ready to go.
Name- DisobidiANT
Receiver- Spektrum AR6110
Weapon- Flipper
Weight- 150g
Wheels- Solarbotics 31mm Aluminium Hubbed
Notes- Flipper powered by a HS82 metal gear servo.
DisobidiANT was our first robot, and is now on it's 10th version! We started, by making a basic robot, with modded Sd200 servos for drive. It was a nightmare doing this, as the guide we had, was for the old type, and we had the new. I got a laser 4 Hitec transmitter and reciever set for christmas, and we set to work connecting him up. When we first tried him, disaster struck. His drive, the servos, were juddering randomly, making him almost impossible to drive. We tried everything, and assumed that it was a radio control problem. After about two months, we finally discovered that it was a bad voltage regulator. We put in a new one, and he looked great. We had made a plastic top, which we had bent to form a scoop. This was a bad idea. The plastic was unbending, causing great pressure on the base of the robot. In the end, the scoop tore up from it's Gaffa tape holding.
We ended up redesigning the robot completely. One day, my dad came home with some aluminum mesh sheet. We fashioned a scoop fron this, and it turned out to be a very good material to work with.
On his first competition, (the earlier design never fought) one of the servo motors blew. Thid was the second time this had happened, but the first time we did not give it a second thought. We looked at the other robots, and found they were all using gearmotors and speed controllers. We rebuilt him, with two motors, and a sabretooth 5a dual motor controller. We also decided to make the scoop into a flipper, as we had saved some weight with taking out the servos. We added a hs82 MG servo for the flipper. We put a carbon fibre arm on the servo, which pushed the flipper up which was on a hinge.
Recently, we have swapped the hitec radio system, with a spektrum one. This save lots of weight, as we could take out a voltage regulator setup.
Name- Hellbound
Class- Micromouse
Drive- 2x Home-Made Geared Motors
Power- Rechargeable 9.4v
Sensors- 2x Feelers
Weight- 156g
Wheels- Custom Wheels
Notes- My first micromouse robot!
Name- TruANT
Receiver- Spektrum AR6110e
Weapon- Dual laser cut titanium spinning discs
Wheels- Pololu acrylic wheels on Scalextric hubs. (after a meeting with Anticyclone we he to make some new ones!)
Notes- Going to be re-built with HDPE armour and Chassis
After seeing the success of other spinner robots, we set out to make our 3rd robot, TruANT. The initial idea was to have a four wheeled, invertible robot with a small horizontal spinner on the front. After about 4 months of careful planning and designing, we came up with the final design. We had noticed there were no invertible spinners, so that was a main part. Also, we decided that it would be great to have two spinners. We decided that it would be BRILLIANT, if we can actually get it to work.The first problem was thefact that it would not bind to the spektrum transmitter. This was a great problem and after a fortnight of trial and error, we took the reciever (A spektrum AR6110e) back to the shop (Slough Radio control) and the exchanged it fr free, and gave us a sheet of asatate as compensation! After we had all the parts, we wired the circuit. When we tried to run the spinners, one spinner was working great, but the other was blipping, and the brushless speed controller was getting awfully hot. After a lot of searching on model aircraft sites, and we settled with running both motors on one controller. This worked fine. Half way through the build process, we went to a Robots Live! competition. Will Thomas, the captian of team Shock, was testing his new vertical spinner, called Inertia. We talked about TruAnt and Inertia, and he offered to laser cut some titanium discs, like the one on Inertia. We carried on building, and we found no electrical problems.We made a chassis from 1mm thick aluminium, which looked great. The wheels were a bit of a problem. We thought that they would fit right onto the motors, but they did not. After a lot more searching, we ordered some scalextric hubs, which would grub screw onto the motor shaft. We finished the chassis, and encountered yet more problems. Number one, was that we were already 134g in weight, and we had calculated that each spinner would weigh 8g. That would mean that we could not make anything to protect our vunerable wheels. Secondly, was the fact that Will could not get the spinners to us for Reading Robot Club 20, where we had entered him in. We managed to solve this problem, by fashioning some aluminium bar spinners, and they worked fine.
how to cwsfya
Made by Will Thomas
