Mini Battlebot Competition

[Johnny_5]

My team and I were just doing some brainstorming after competition for ways to not only get money for next year but to also get FIRST out to the community and more high school students involved.

We thought up the idea of designing our own KOP and selling it to the student teams with a control system based on the VEX platform using the radio controlled capabilities.

What do you all think about that? I would love to discuss our ideas more in depth and help anyone else or is interested, plus I would love a little help for a team that has already done this

[Kims Robot]

As part of the Ruckus competition we have run Vex type competitions in the past, I will see if I can find some of our documents (Alex Cormier put together the last few).

Some suggestions if you want to run a small competition like this...
1. Stick with a kit that already exists for the electronics/motors... it will make things easier and more consistent across the teams.
2. Put a limit on the additional parts... like vex or FTC or any other similar competition either make a short list of materials that can be used, or even just use the rules from an existing kit/competition.
3. Come up with some SIMPLE rules & a simple field. The more complex you make the rules, the harder it will be, and the harder it will be for teams to participate/build their own structures.
4. You need to give teams a longer headstart than an FRC buildseason, especially if you don't have preestablished teams. Try to give teams at least 3 months to build their robots, if not more.
5. START EARLY... recruit teams, get their ideas, see what THEY would like to do, especially your first year. We've had limited success when we don't provide the game info early enough or dont advertise early enough.
6. Avoid key times. If you are planning a Vex based competition, it may be wise to avoid the Vex season. If you are planning to recruit FRC teams, avoid the FRC build season. If you want to get Lego teams, avoid their build season. Make sure you plan around major school events & holidays & factor them into team schedules (finals weeks are hard for kids, Dec-Jan is often tough, start of school often means vacations the weeks before, etc).

And lastly, my personal opinion is that battlebots is tough, especially in the FIRST community... we are so used to being able to use our robots over and over, being able to demonstrate them, that any competition that destroys 3 months of hard work is often a harder sell. Its a great spectator sport, but a very expensive investment (especially when someone chops up your vex or FTC controller module!!). But again, that part is just my personal opinion

Good luck!

[Johnny_5]

Battlebots is one of the harder things for the FIRST community to take part in due to that fact. But I think we have settled upon the Vex 75Mhz transmitter and receiver system.

We are going to put together our own KOP just like FTC or FRC does and sell them to the students. Our KOP will mostly contain the items needed to build the drive train. There will be instructions in the kit to build at least 3 different drive trains, and each one will use different parts so teams will have some left over.

Our field plan is to use something similar to the FTC field and modify it just slightly. We would like to raise it up about 16 inches off the ground and add traps or pits to increase the level of difficultly and entertainment.

The reason we chose the 75Mhz system is because it is relatively inexpensive in case something does get ruined. The radio system will also work with the field controller that vex sells. And right now I am working on a protective case and rest that is required for all sorts of easy to damage, sensitive electronic components can sit in.

As for rules we have only done some minor brainstorming. But we have decided for school safety reasons that there will be no fire, and no shooting projectiles. There will be some sort of size restriction. And I am quite sure that our school system will come along and manage to somehow "water" it down quite a bit. But our main goal with rules is to level the playing field so no team can go out and buy $3000 components. Plus since this is going to be held in the gym we can't have parts flying everywhere.

Our goal with this whole competition is to get everyone interested in robots in some way shape or form. Because for some people hanging inner tubes on a rack with a robot is just not cool enough. But we also want to open up the community to FIRST and maybe get some other clubs involved in the competition.

[sanddrag]

I don't understand quite what the intended market is? Who is the customer for these kits? How much would they cost? How would you go about getting people to buy into this?

[Hawiian Cadder]

this might be cool, 2 rs775s and 2 rs550s for motors, u get pneumatics, and you have to use wood for the frame.

[Johnny_5]

Yeah, this would be the first year of us trying to do a battlebots competition, and it seems to be very difficulty. I wanted to put this out to the community to maybe gain some assistance or ideas about how to do this.

2.4Ghz systems would definetly be a safety increase. However our market is teams of high school students with minimal knowledge of robotics. These teams will be assisted by one FRC student team member to provide assistance to the high school teams.

The goal of this is to provide an opening bang to robotics and then slowly apply the ideals of FIRST by helping give back to the community by building a robot to clean up the parks. In our opinion this is a good way to get a lot of people quickly interested in show them how cool robots are, and then we can show what FIRST is all about

[Jeffy]

VEX will not hold up in a battlebot arena unless you restrict it to the point where it wouldn't be fun anyways.
This bot cost me 150 bucks in addition to the reciever and transmitter. It weighs 2 lbs. 7 oz. Good luck to any vex bot to stand up against it. ALSO, most, if not all combat robot leagues require 2.4ghz radio systems on anything with an active weapon. It is a safety precaution, and I don't know enough to judge whether or not it truly is necessary.

Now, you battlebot fans don't get offended when I say that I have been part of both and enjoy FRC much more. Battlebots tends to invite in many people who just wanna break stuff. Most robots are just "lets make a big spinning thing" and then drill holes until it is underweight. Many aren't planned out and do not take much engineering to make (my own included). But FRC, is always a complex challenge with many ways to approach it. It takes careful planning to make a bot work. I am sure Vex robotics competition is much like this (I have never competed in VRC).

However, I do believe a more sport-like game would work. Infact, many FRC games are ready and availible to be scaled down for a vex competition. Of the more recent games, I think Aim high, Overdrive, Breakaway and LogoMotion could all be done on a smaller, simpler scale.