VS Combat Robot

A 1.5lb light weight robot with a vertical spinning weapon.

Goal: Design and manufacture a combat robot weighing under 1.5lb.

DESIGN and MANUFACTURING:

I collaborated with another student on this project. We started off with design in SolidWorks. There was a total of 4 design iterations where each iteration DFM and DFA was considered more. Initially the motor mount for the weapon and wheel motors was part of the chassis but taking DFM and DFA into consideration, we made them separate pieces that simply bolted into the chassis. Everything was 3D printed to save weight except the weapon which was water jetted.

ELECTRONICS:

Every electronics was soldered by me. We used a flip sky remote controller to communicate and command the bot. We used geared DC motors for wheels, brushless DC motor for weapon motor, ESC to communicate with flip sky controller.

RESULT:

We beat 2 other teams in a tournament match. The goal of robot was to flip other robots using the vertical spinning weapon and it did perform very well. Unfortunately, we ended up losing in the quarter finals. The cause of loss was not because the other bot was better or electronics malfunction. The cause was that the motor came off the motor mount because of the vibration in 3D printed chassis. We could have possibly avoided that by using longer screws connecting the motor and motor mount.