This page describes FrostBite 2.0, Team Toad's flagship robot as it competed at BattleBots Treasure Island 2001. Going in to the competition, FrostBite was ranked the #16 heavyweight by BattleBots.
(29-Aug-01) Now that the heavies have been shown, we can talk about FrostBite's fights.
Scorecard:
The first fight was textbook...FrostBite was simply lower than Circuit Breaker, and was able to get under and outpush. After pushing CB onto a killsaw, FB would back up and wait for the saw to throw him back to the middle. About halfway through the match Debbie started yelling in my ear, "Stop hitting him, he's dead." My first knockout.
The second fight was very exciting, but apparently CC only wanted to show fights with knockouts in my part of the bracket. In its first 5 fights, HexyD knocked out or disabled 4 of its 5 opponents. The exception was FrostBite.
Even with FB's blade running right on the ground (we all but lifted the front wheels), HexyD was able to get under FB and flip us 3 feet in the air. Nice job, Hexy! The first minute had FB flipped 4 times...at some point, though, their lifting blade got bent, and they could no longer get under us...the tide had turned. The second minute consisted of FB pushing Hexy sideways a lot. In the final minute of the fight, FB pushed Hexy onto 4 or 5 sets of kill saws, but at the end both bots were still moving.
I'd still like to see judges' scores on this fight...my guess is that Hexy's 4 flips were considered superior to the 4 or 5 times FB pushed Hexy on the kill saws. FB was undamaged, while Hexy's arm was bent enough that it could no longer flip FB.
We won a very close fight in Vegas against overkill, where the flashy weapon was awarded aggression but we won on strategy, because OK's knife was ineffective.
In Treasure Island, a different rule must have applied. We were undamaged, and we damaged the other robot's weapon. But one of the judges told me later, "So what, you damaged his weapon...at least he HAD a weapon."
Still, hat's off to Team Whoopass...they were nice guys and they built a great bot. They gave me my first taste of driving upside-down in the box. Good job.
And note...this fall, FrostBite will have a nice, flashy, dangerous set of teeth to make those judges happy :-)
(11-May-2001) Dan gave me a big chunk of War Machine Surplus brass bar
to use as ballast to bring FrostBite right up to 210 pounds.
The photo on the right shows one of the two crates we'll be handing over to the ECRA shipping company in only 4 days.
(8-May-2001) FrostBite 2.0 is almost done. We got the body painted last week, the motors,
batteries, blade and linear actuator are mounted. Tomorrow we wire up the electronics,
mount the antenna, and do drive testing. We also have an unusual problem: FrostBite is 11
pounds underweight. Options include putting ballast in the back, or adding a second plate
of 3/16" 6061 aluminum to either the top or bottom.
(30-Apr-2001) Finally got underway on FrostBite 2.0; the photo at the top of the
page on the left shows me converting the linear actuator from Metric (12mm) to
English (1/2") mount.
This photo shows the new, smaller body with 4 NPC 60522 motors mounted. Next we mount the blade and get the body painted while we have dry weather here in Pittsburgh.
For the Spring competition, FrostBite gets a new Snowplow of Death (we increased the thickness to 1/4"
steel, and gave the bottom of the blade a sharper edge, with a reinforcing angle iron welded to the back.
FrostBite also gets a slimmer body...we cut two inches off the length and two inches off the width,
and we angled the back end top and bottom.
This allowed us to cut the weight of the body from 57.5 pounds down to 47 pounds. The weight savings
allows us to upgrade to 3 Hawker Genesis G13-EP batteries.
We tested the increased battery capacity by using FrostBite to plow the snow off our driveway.
Of course, before we could really put FrostBite to work clearing snow, we had to make a set of
tire chains for it. We really need another set of chains to put on the back tires, too.