Another highlight of Season 5.0 was the BattleAnts competition organized by the
SECR. Comedy Central filmed the event, and we hope that some of the footage
makes it into Season 5.0.
TadPole lost its first fight to Peter Abrahamson's Tsunami, driven by Mark Setrakian. Jacey did better, driving El Furro! to a victory over Derek Zahn's CupCake, driven by Andy Miller. El Furro! then lost a close decision to Gnat.
SnowCone vs. Bulldog
What BullDog didn't do was stop moving...normally a robot that was hit that hard has the decency to quit. Instead BullDog came back for more, and SnowCone bent another spike.
About 1 minute into the fight, BullDog managed to get underneath SnowCone from the side
and drove it across the box and into the spike strip. Because SnowCone was tipped
over to one side, the spike was able to get between the Lexan and the aluminum.
SnowCone was stuck, and lost by KO.
Afterwards, we found that SnowCone's MagMotor shaft was bent and the motor was toast. The spike strip spike bent the internal battery holder a little, but did no real damage. We replaced the MagMotor, and SnowCone worked fine, with one exception: the blade was bent in two dimensions, and now vibrates badly...it will have to be replaced.
BullDog had to replace their spikes with steel rods from the local Home Depot, but their drive was in good shape to go on.
Ice Cube vs. Trocar
Ice Cube's first opponent was Trocar, a parallelogram shaped ramming bot with
a steel spike. Both robots charged towards the center of the ring, and met
with a thunderous crash.
Then Trocar bounced backwards and Ice Cube was flipped upside down. Kelsey and I fiddled with the controls (I had forgotten to program an invert switch, so when I told her to flip the switch it had no effect).
Fortunately, with Trocar dead,
Kelsey and I had time to figure out the switch was not programed, and Kelsey drove
Ice Cube in a victory dance. Another KO for IC.
Trocar was running an IFI radio, and it appears to have come loose somehow from the
impact.
Ice Cube's righting arm was bent by the flip upside down, so we took it to the hotel parking lot
and did some experiments. We found that by rocking the wheels back and forth, Ice Cube could
go from a nose stand to running on its back, so we decided to remove the arm and replace it
with 12 pounds of steel plates donated and cut by Lincoln Welding.
IC's second opponent was not so gracious. Jonathan Ridder's Zigg-Zagg was a very
low fast ramming bot. The bots met in the middle of the arena, and IC flipped
over backwards, bending the hoop steel around the bot. Since the hoop was too stiff
at TI-2, I had made it much looser.
Next time we'll try for a middle-ground. By the end of the fight, IC was still driving around agressively, but the hoop had gotten caught on a spike and was completly ripped off.
Kelsey did a great job of driving, and never left Zigg-Zagg alone, even after her hoop got torn up. To the left you can see it bent out of shape, and to the right you can see the broken hoop actually sticking through the opening in the front of Zigg-Zagg.
