Team Members: Ellie Beck & Ameer Taher
When we were initially brainstorming ideas for our robot’s weapon and design, we used previous year’s bots for inspiration to help us see what works well for a robot this small. During this, we had a few things in mind; the internals of our robot had to be well protected, the weapon had to be effective, the robot’s weight should be balanced, and we wanted to be able to easily replace weapon parts if they were damaged. Based on these factors, the full-body spinner design stood out to us as a viable option for our robot. The weapon not only acts as protection for the robot but also leads to a lot of possibilities for the parts that will actually cause damage to other bots. Also, since these weapon arms are just extensions to the spinning shell of the robot, we were able to design a modular system for swapping out broken arms without having to take the robot apart.
One challenge we faced with this design, however, was how to implement a drive chain for the weapon motor to increase torque and make the full-body spinner more effective. Our solution was to create a 2:1 gear ratio with a belt that meshes with the custom-sized gears. We also focused on optimizing the weight distribution of our components and making the spinner symmetrical so that the bot does not break itself apart when the weapon motor is running. Although our robot is just a CAD model for now, we are excited to start prototyping soon.
The above was written by Ameer and Ellie, current freshmen members of Robobrawl 1lb. Our team, SpinCycle, has been competing the full body spinner for three years now. As current juniors and after having come up with the idea of using a full body spinner in the 1lb division as freshmen, to hear that someone had seen our bot’s performance was a proud moment for us. Since not many others had used the design successfully before our team created our design and competed it for the first time, one can imagine how flattering it is that someone wants to base their design on ours. We wish the best to Ameer and his team, and we are glad that our team could serve as a model for his.
