I’ve always been interested in this type of sport as a kid always thought it was made believe but after watching how I met your mother I was refreshed into getting into this sport for real.
In the process of building my first 150g, 3D printed frame. Just finishing soldering and I’m done, I’ve already got loads of ideas for when I teach myself cad and am very excited to try a few things out
@@JustCuzRobotics Thankyou for the response! Got most my ideas in my head and parts in shopping baskets but can’t decide what size screws to use, my next will be 3D printed and hdpe for a beetleweight but don’t know if m3 will be big enough or should I go bigger? Thinking heat set inserts as not to strip out the plastics when taking it apart numerous times
I really like combat robitics... Maybe I'll give it a try later. Your channel is great!! I was wondering if a horizontal spinner with an airfoil shaped blade wouldn't work. I'm into aircraft (mostly human powered aircraft and free flight models) and I'm sure you can get quite a bit of downforce for the same amount of drag or just a bit more. For example your antweight could use this to be way grippier and stable when hitting...
While certainly difficult to do, there are robots that have done this in the past. I know that a member of the Valkyrie team actually has Antweight and Beetleweight robots called "Foiled" and "Foiled Again" that have a 3D printed airfoil built into the spinning disc to give it extra down force. I don't know if those specific robots compete anymore, but they always fun to watch.
Yep! I have fought Foiled Again with Division twice. The builder Alex told me when they did the math. Because the smaller and larger bots generally use about the same tip speed but with drastically larger weapon diameters in the bigger robots, the actual RPM the weapons spin at is pitifully slow for generating lift. He said at the 250 pound scale you might get 1 pound of downforce. But at the ant and beetle scales it's significantly more promising with a weapon going >10000RPM instead of
One pound sounds far too little... I did some basic math (not precise at all, but good enough for now) and I think 50 kg of downforce on a heavyweight is possible. That indeed doesn't really pay off. For beetleweights I think 6 kg is about the max you can get, if you really go for a weapon that produces max downforce. Foiled again doesn't look like a really good downforce design, but I would have to look closer for that. In your case (division) I think you could have some benefit by streamlining the spokes. The Cd would be reduced massively, resulting in slightly higher rpm, or way less power. You really should give it a try. I can design some custom airfoils if you want. Aircraft are only my hobby but in the last year I have become pretty good at designing airfoils (although I am not nearly as good as the pro's of course).
@@toonverbruggen7351 Hi, Toon! I understand the points you're making but, unlike you, robots don't know anything about drag, laminar flow, and Reynolds numbers. ;-) The typical combat robot is very dense, so I think you'll find that gyroscopic forces from rotary weapons will be far more influential than aerodynamic ones. The propellers on a quad-copter ('drone') are light; the machine's chassis is light, too. If you built a quad-copter chassis from 18mm thick steel plate and fitted the motors with steel propellers, it wouldn't get off the ground, no matter how carefully you designed the blades. It's like Leonardo da Vinci's helicopter idea; air's just not dense enough. (It might fly in liquid mercury, though!) In general aviation, 2-bladed propellers lose efficiency as tipspeed increases, and the kinetic weapons of combat robots are massively built to withstand impacts, so even a 50mm thick Clark-Y-style 'cargo lifting' aerofoil would need to be a couple of metres across to generate any appreciable stabilising downforce on a 110 kg robot. Think of the (carbon-fibre) blade dynamics of a typical flybar-less RC helicopter. Combat robots are very different. And any lift (or downforce) generated by a heavy steel weapon would be entirely overwhelmed by the immense gyroscopic forces created. People who stick spoilers on the rear of their cars are always disappointed by the tiny amount of downforce they generate at normal driving speeds. On the other hand, a 750 kg Formula 1 car produces many hundreds of kilos of downforce from its wings, but that's only possible because the car has such a high power-to-weight ratio. If an F1 car was built like a combat robot it would weigh 8,000 kg and wouldn't be able to move fast enough to generate any appreciable amount of downforce. A railway freight train weighs millions of kilos but travels slowly; fitting its wagons with wings wouldn't reduce the axle-loading significantly - it'd just create lots more drag. So trains don't use wings. Speaking of BattleBots, though, the famous robot 'Tombstone' (made by Ray Billings) has a variety of weapon bars; they're typically around 1100 mm in length and 35+ kg in weight. Whether you take the CAD software or the empirical approach, I don't think any conceivable aerofoil will produce a significant [sic] amount of lift/downforce when it's spinning that amount of mass. The figures don't add up. It's rather like saying that if a ship's steel hull can displace 20,000 tons and still float, then an iron kayak should be a good idea, too. But it'll sink like an anchor. There are some roboteers who've used dedicated fans and enclosed shrouds to produce downforce in their lightweight machines, but even in the small weight classes the effects aren't particularly useful. Excess mass is the problem. Have you seen those tiny toy RC cars that can drive up walls? They've got fans that produce suction (downforce) but they're very light. Make one from steel and it wouldn't work. So... I'm pretty sure that turning a weapon blade into an aerofoil would have little effect on a combat robot. I'm a keen aeromodeller and have been designing and building aircraft for decades - mostly powered planes and quite large [4 metre] gliders. The thing I've found is that air - unlike water or oil - is depressingly thin stuff and it takes an awful lot of effort to get it to do anything useful. Fluid dynamics is a fascinating area of study, though, and aerofoil design is interesting and fun. But I'll bet that not even Mark Drela could design an aerofoil that would keep Tombstone stuck to the floor. :-)
@@EleanorPeterson Well robots are more likely to know about laminar flow than aircraft I would say... ;) I get your point, and I also think that downforce would have little effect on heavyweights, but as mentioned above, in the beetleweight scale region it could work (I think). Maybe drag reduction on spinners is something that can be more common than downforce, but as I don't build bots... others will have to try it out. By the way, trying to get Tombstone sucked into the floor is a little bit weird, as it often drives inverted, but I get your point. Love Mark Drela.
I used to watch the show (battle bots) with my dad we even talked about what if we made a combat robot, years later I find out more about it I was discouraged due to its scale and complexity and yeah i would probably get a sensory overload do to all the lights sounds cameras and crowd I’m glad that there are smaller scale robot combat (though I still love the shows even if they are a little showy and kinda like reality tv or wrestling
Sad that combat robotics are more common in first world countries but the world's become a smaller n smaller place so not so hard hoping over to a country with events loved ur video very helpful to clarify a few things!! THNX
It's sortof the other way around I think. Norwalk is located near all the Boston and Pennsylvania teams and tends to attract all the established battlebots teams in the surrounding areas. The event is only about 2 years old but several of the teams have been around for a whole. MIT and WPI are both well represented there as well which accounts for 4 or more teams already.
Ive tried to find events on multiple websites for insect weight classes in Kentucky but cant find any. Can anyone help me find any (insect robot fighting classes). I have contacted Witch Doctor on their TH-cam channel too.
I recently got an antweight kit for Christmas, and I already have plans for what I'm gonna do with it. But the controller I got with it wasn't very good, anyone have suggestions for a good controller? I don't really need many functions (I don't ever plan on making something super complicated like, say, red dragon), but I do want something with good connection to my robot and little lag between inputs.
The cheapest radios I would recommend are the FlySky FSi6 (which tons of people use including myself) and the Turnigy Evolution (which is what we use to control Bloodsport and is compatible with all the same receivers as the FS-i6. Both work with common AFHDS2 receivers which are very affordable and reliable. If you wanna be hardcore I recently upgraded to a Tanaris QX7 which is also extremely commonly used by bot builders due to having a ton of programming features. But it's sortof a steep learning curve so the i6 is a better starting place. And half the price.
I'm not sure what you mean. There are components that we buy but there simply isn't like a quarter of a Battlebot for sale. For other combat robot weight classes toy can buy an entire robot in the 3lb or 1lb weight class.
It has to follow the safety requirements of being able to fail safe and respond to a radio controller. And needs a hardware kill switch as well among other safety factors. These bots are driven they are not usually autonomous (though it is allowed provided a remote failsafe is added). So technically yes its possible and allowed. But it would probably be very uncompetitive.
@@JustCuzRobotics yes I knew these robots and their weapons had a have a controller. And don’t expect something like this from me any time soon. Don’t have the money and still need to learn some things. Curiosity question
Not really. Not in a complete way anyhow. You can do mechanical simulations on individual components or physics simulations with some really simplified models but nothing that accurately represents a Combat Robot impact. That's part of why it can be challenging to design and build a robot.
@@JustCuzRobotics Aww that's too bad. I wish there was at least a simple way so you could get a n accurate reading on say, a dummy drone. That way it would make building allot cheaper.
would something like an injection based fire bot be legal in a competition where flame bots are legal? basically it uses a sharp hammer with a hole on the end that spews flames with the goal of melting internals.
Yeah! I think kits are perfect if you either don't have access to any fancy tools or just as a general starting point for anybody. They save a ton of time and effort at the start. It may not be the best long term to only ever use a kit but it's a good way to learn about the electronics and RC things without having to do months of research first. The witch doctor series I linked is made around teaching people to use the Fingertech Viper kit but the fundamentals are also critical for building your own robot as well.
@@JustCuzRobotics heres the isssue, I dont get a lot of money and if im gonna buy a combat robot is either spinner or bust. My whole life ive been obsessed with destructive robots, if I had like 400$ I would go for the lifter then spinner but I dont have that kind of money.
@@JustCuzRobotics thank you so much for this quick reply.any competition in Asia?As I'm from south Asia it would be easier for me to compete.Thanks again
All I know of is a tournament in South Korea but I have no idea where you would find details for it. It's run by Team Orby I believe. I'm in America so I am definitely not the best person to ask about events in Asia.
I just found out about Norwalk Havoc a few weeks ago and I'm super excited to tune in for the event on the 6th.
I’ve always been interested in this type of sport as a kid always thought it was made believe but after watching how I met your mother I was refreshed into getting into this sport for real.
The video I was looking for! Love the footage from non battle-bots, really insightful
In the process of building my first 150g, 3D printed frame. Just finishing soldering and I’m done, I’ve already got loads of ideas for when I teach myself cad and am very excited to try a few things out
Awesome! There are a ton of great TH-cam channels for learning CAD. I recommend Product Design Online and the OG of Fusion videos, Lars Christensen
@@JustCuzRobotics Thankyou for the response! Got most my ideas in my head and parts in shopping baskets but can’t decide what size screws to use, my next will be 3D printed and hdpe for a beetleweight but don’t know if m3 will be big enough or should I go bigger? Thinking heat set inserts as not to strip out the plastics when taking it apart numerous times
I cannot wait to get started building Kin Chan someday soon. Thank you for the insight.
Really goog video, my family always ask about my robots and why I spend a lot of money.
I really like combat robitics... Maybe I'll give it a try later. Your channel is great!! I was wondering if a horizontal spinner with an airfoil shaped blade wouldn't work. I'm into aircraft (mostly human powered aircraft and free flight models) and I'm sure you can get quite a bit of downforce for the same amount of drag or just a bit more. For example your antweight could use this to be way grippier and stable when hitting...
While certainly difficult to do, there are robots that have done this in the past. I know that a member of the Valkyrie team actually has Antweight and Beetleweight robots called "Foiled" and "Foiled Again" that have a 3D printed airfoil built into the spinning disc to give it extra down force. I don't know if those specific robots compete anymore, but they always fun to watch.
Yep! I have fought Foiled Again with Division twice. The builder Alex told me when they did the math. Because the smaller and larger bots generally use about the same tip speed but with drastically larger weapon diameters in the bigger robots, the actual RPM the weapons spin at is pitifully slow for generating lift. He said at the 250 pound scale you might get 1 pound of downforce. But at the ant and beetle scales it's significantly more promising with a weapon going >10000RPM instead of
One pound sounds far too little... I did some basic math (not precise at all, but good enough for now) and I think 50 kg of downforce on a heavyweight is possible. That indeed doesn't really pay off. For beetleweights I think 6 kg is about the max you can get, if you really go for a weapon that produces max downforce. Foiled again doesn't look like a really good downforce design, but I would have to look closer for that.
In your case (division) I think you could have some benefit by streamlining the spokes. The Cd would be reduced massively, resulting in slightly higher rpm, or way less power. You really should give it a try. I can design some custom airfoils if you want. Aircraft are only my hobby but in the last year I have become pretty good at designing airfoils (although I am not nearly as good as the pro's of course).
@@toonverbruggen7351 Hi, Toon! I understand the points you're making but, unlike you, robots don't know anything about drag, laminar flow, and Reynolds numbers. ;-)
The typical combat robot is very dense, so I think you'll find that gyroscopic forces from rotary weapons will be far more influential than aerodynamic ones.
The propellers on a quad-copter ('drone') are light; the machine's chassis is light, too. If you built a quad-copter chassis from 18mm thick steel plate and fitted the motors with steel propellers, it wouldn't get off the ground, no matter how carefully you designed the blades. It's like Leonardo da Vinci's helicopter idea; air's just not dense enough. (It might fly in liquid mercury, though!)
In general aviation, 2-bladed propellers lose efficiency as tipspeed increases, and the kinetic weapons of combat robots are massively built to withstand impacts, so even a 50mm thick Clark-Y-style 'cargo lifting' aerofoil would need to be a couple of metres across to generate any appreciable stabilising downforce on a 110 kg robot.
Think of the (carbon-fibre) blade dynamics of a typical flybar-less RC helicopter. Combat robots are very different. And any lift (or downforce) generated by a heavy steel weapon would be entirely overwhelmed by the immense gyroscopic forces created.
People who stick spoilers on the rear of their cars are always disappointed by the tiny amount of downforce they generate at normal driving speeds. On the other hand, a 750 kg Formula 1 car produces many hundreds of kilos of downforce from its wings, but that's only possible because the car has such a high power-to-weight ratio. If an F1 car was built like a combat robot it would weigh 8,000 kg and wouldn't be able to move fast enough to generate any appreciable amount of downforce.
A railway freight train weighs millions of kilos but travels slowly; fitting its wagons with wings wouldn't reduce the axle-loading significantly - it'd just create lots more drag. So trains don't use wings.
Speaking of BattleBots, though, the famous robot 'Tombstone' (made by Ray Billings) has a variety of weapon bars; they're typically around 1100 mm in length and 35+ kg in weight. Whether you take the CAD software or the empirical approach, I don't think any conceivable aerofoil will produce a significant [sic] amount of lift/downforce when it's spinning that amount of mass.
The figures don't add up. It's rather like saying that if a ship's steel hull can displace 20,000 tons and still float, then an iron kayak should be a good idea, too. But it'll sink like an anchor.
There are some roboteers who've used dedicated fans and enclosed shrouds to produce downforce in their lightweight machines, but even in the small weight classes the effects aren't particularly useful. Excess mass is the problem.
Have you seen those tiny toy RC cars that can drive up walls? They've got fans that produce suction (downforce) but they're very light. Make one from steel and it wouldn't work.
So... I'm pretty sure that turning a weapon blade into an aerofoil would have little effect on a combat robot.
I'm a keen aeromodeller and have been designing and building aircraft for decades - mostly powered planes and quite large [4 metre] gliders. The thing I've found is that air - unlike water or oil - is depressingly thin stuff and it takes an awful lot of effort to get it to do anything useful.
Fluid dynamics is a fascinating area of study, though, and aerofoil design is interesting and fun. But I'll bet that not even Mark Drela could design an aerofoil that would keep Tombstone stuck to the floor. :-)
@@EleanorPeterson Well robots are more likely to know about laminar flow than aircraft I would say... ;) I get your point, and I also think that downforce would have little effect on heavyweights, but as mentioned above, in the beetleweight scale region it could work (I think). Maybe drag reduction on spinners is something that can be more common than downforce, but as I don't build bots... others will have to try it out.
By the way, trying to get Tombstone sucked into the floor is a little bit weird, as it often drives inverted, but I get your point. Love Mark Drela.
I used to watch the show (battle bots) with my dad we even talked about what if we made a combat robot, years later I find out more about it I was discouraged due to its scale and complexity and yeah i would probably get a sensory overload do to all the lights sounds cameras and crowd I’m glad that there are smaller scale robot combat (though I still love the shows even if they are a little showy and kinda like reality tv or wrestling
Thank you for this
This was exactly what I was looking for! Thanks!
Eyy great to see team panic get a shout out ☺️
Man, gruff got it handed to him in that fight.
Hammer/Pick bots are my favorite
Sad that combat robotics are more common in first world countries but the world's become a smaller n smaller place so not so hard hoping over to a country with events loved ur video very helpful to clarify a few things!! THNX
Get on a boat to England we will give you a house and a free car plus money then you can build your own
Why does the Norwalk league produce so many battlebots/ builders? There's like 4 people from Norwalk alone in BB this year
It's sortof the other way around I think. Norwalk is located near all the Boston and Pennsylvania teams and tends to attract all the established battlebots teams in the surrounding areas. The event is only about 2 years old but several of the teams have been around for a whole. MIT and WPI are both well represented there as well which accounts for 4 or more teams already.
Subscribed, hope it helps and keep up the great videos.
This is really helpful
Ive tried to find events on multiple websites for insect weight classes in Kentucky but cant find any. Can anyone help me find any (insect robot fighting classes). I have contacted Witch Doctor on their TH-cam channel too.
Most stressful sport in the world , but sure does bloody entertain 😂
I recently got an antweight kit for Christmas, and I already have plans for what I'm gonna do with it. But the controller I got with it wasn't very good, anyone have suggestions for a good controller? I don't really need many functions (I don't ever plan on making something super complicated like, say, red dragon), but I do want something with good connection to my robot and little lag between inputs.
The cheapest radios I would recommend are the FlySky FSi6 (which tons of people use including myself) and the Turnigy Evolution (which is what we use to control Bloodsport and is compatible with all the same receivers as the FS-i6. Both work with common AFHDS2 receivers which are very affordable and reliable.
If you wanna be hardcore I recently upgraded to a Tanaris QX7 which is also extremely commonly used by bot builders due to having a ton of programming features. But it's sortof a steep learning curve so the i6 is a better starting place. And half the price.
Question about battlebot, does your entire vehicle have to self built or can some be bought premade
I'm not sure what you mean. There are components that we buy but there simply isn't like a quarter of a Battlebot for sale. For other combat robot weight classes toy can buy an entire robot in the 3lb or 1lb weight class.
@@JustCuzRobotics Could you buy a robot build for surveillance or something, redesign and reprogram it and use that
It has to follow the safety requirements of being able to fail safe and respond to a radio controller. And needs a hardware kill switch as well among other safety factors. These bots are driven they are not usually autonomous (though it is allowed provided a remote failsafe is added). So technically yes its possible and allowed. But it would probably be very uncompetitive.
@@JustCuzRobotics yes I knew these robots and their weapons had a have a controller. And don’t expect something like this from me any time soon. Don’t have the money and still need to learn some things. Curiosity question
If I ever did build a bot how do I try and qualify for Vegas
Is there a way to virtualy test a build without actualy building it?
Not really. Not in a complete way anyhow. You can do mechanical simulations on individual components or physics simulations with some really simplified models but nothing that accurately represents a Combat Robot impact. That's part of why it can be challenging to design and build a robot.
@@JustCuzRobotics Aww that's too bad. I wish there was at least a simple way so you could get a n accurate reading on say, a dummy drone. That way it would make building allot cheaper.
Bloodsport:Boston Strong
would something like an injection based fire bot be legal in a competition where flame bots are legal? basically it uses a sharp hammer with a hole on the end that spews flames with the goal of melting internals.
I don't see why not. Build it!
Are kits a good idea?
Yeah! I think kits are perfect if you either don't have access to any fancy tools or just as a general starting point for anybody. They save a ton of time and effort at the start. It may not be the best long term to only ever use a kit but it's a good way to learn about the electronics and RC things without having to do months of research first. The witch doctor series I linked is made around teaching people to use the Fingertech Viper kit but the fundamentals are also critical for building your own robot as well.
@@JustCuzRobotics Cool! thank you for the tips. I am currently saving up
@@JustCuzRobotics also, what would you say is the best spinner kit? I'm not gonna buy a wedge
I do not recommend a spinner as a first bot. They are very dangerous even at 1lb scale. Maybe try the Viper Lifter.
@@JustCuzRobotics heres the isssue, I dont get a lot of money and if im gonna buy a combat robot is either spinner or bust. My whole life ive been obsessed with destructive robots, if I had like 400$ I would go for the lifter then spinner but I dont have that kind of money.
looks like it's only for the people who live in USA.Cant i compete?
I have no idea what country you are in but there are competitions in many countries besides the US. www.robotcombatevents.com/
@@JustCuzRobotics thank you so much for this quick reply.any competition in Asia?As I'm from south Asia it would be easier for me to compete.Thanks again
All I know of is a tournament in South Korea but I have no idea where you would find details for it. It's run by Team Orby I believe. I'm in America so I am definitely not the best person to ask about events in Asia.
Combat Wombat
Are magnets allowed?
Most competitions allow magnets but all of the ones that I've competed at are on a wooden floor so they wouldn't do anything
@@JustCuzRobotics right on, thanks. The idea I have has nothing to do with the floor though.