Antescher Assault Systems Ants

I thought I'd better make a thread covering all (2) of my bots, as my single-bot thread became more about the unfeatured bot. :) I've got two at the moment: Suspicious Houmous and Sprouting Potato, which were both field tested at BotFest.

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/942/4...1e81b5ee_c.jpg

Sprouting Potato is a fairly basic 4 motor pusher. It drives about, it fails to push, it flies into the pit with the greatest of ease! It fought 3 and lost 3, mainly due to driver inability. :p When I had it under control, I found that despite having 4 motors, it couldn't out-push any other bots. I've got a few possible causes for this inability..

• It's 20g underweight
• It tends to drive up things, removing half the pushing power and increasing the grip of the opponent
• Grip seemed suspect

So, modifications will be a scoop rather than spikes (might make it interchangeable), smaller grippier wheels (possibly even caterpillar tracks!), and more weight. There's enough weight to add a servo, which is interesting... :roll:

Suspicious Houmous is a lifter, with a lifting spike at each side of the bot which rotate 360 degrees. I'd previously used it at AWS 55, where its lifters failed to work properly, and it had really bad handling. It fought 2 and lost 2. Seeing a pattern? :roll:

Well, after that, I changed the way the lifters work, and changed the wheel positions so that they're right at the front. It made it handle even more strangely, but it meant that if it managed a lift, it wouldn't lift it's own wheels off of the ground. So, this time it fought 3 and lost... 2! It actually won a fight!! :D

It worked much more like it was supposed to. The lifters could lift, although getting them into a position where they would lift was difficult. I couldn't tell how low they were, so trying to position them to get under someone usually meant i beached myself, which was incredibly embarrassing! I could use them at mid-height as quite a good pusher arrangement, and they were good for getting out of trouble (even managed a pit escape!) and self-righting. Plus being able to do backflips is pretty cool. 8)

Improvements? It was having some ground clearance issues due to using 20mm standoffs at the last minute, so I need to put it on a diet. The main culprit is the power switch - it takes up a surprising amount of space! Retro's fuse gave me an idea - motherboard jumpers! I'll just have one of those poking out somewhere. :) ooh - it also had a weird issue where the lifters would rotate of their own accord. I had to keep adjusting them. That maaay have been a TX issue, as the centering of the throttle (which is sprung like the right stick) sometimes drifts. I think it might not have a deadzone set up, so that's easy to fix.

I have other ideas, of course. Including three new robots; a lifter based on Lucky from Battlebots, a horizontal pincer, and my continuing mission to build a melon-shaped robot (it'll most likely be armed with an axe). Fun!

I've seen the thread on the melon on the other forum, it's a nice shape and is definately different, interested to see how you manage the curving too.

Yay for fuses! That was an accident tbh, I misunderstood the rules and as I was using LiPo I fitted a fuse, my switch was also too big, so we ended up with an Ant sized link, works Ok, can be a bit fiddly at time though.

For the traction you could try some of nuts and bots wheels, I only have 2 and had a surprising amount of traction, it was a shame the lifters were so tricky to operate, looks a very well built machine.

I would've used n&b wheels, but I only had four, and two of them are on Houmous. There's also the option of Lego wheels, but I'm not sure how to attach them. I didn't have the time to experiment.

Now I have lots of time! Well.. after I've made things up to the wifey..

That fight against you (or should I say 3 fights) really was a tough one, but it was so tempting to pull you out of the pit and totally worth it (even if it did mean a rematch).

That match was awesome! The best of three format was pretty cool (and padded out the competition a bit), as I think I finally started getting used to the controls, and finding out some of the things I could do with the lifters. I hadn't driven it at home, as I only completed it 30 minutes before leaving for BotFest.

Not that it would work on our carpet.. I think I need to make an 'arena' (board) to put on the decking outside, so me and my son can teach each other how to drive. :D

I like the axe/clamp thing that yours and a couple of other bots had going on. Makes me more sure of what I'm gonna do with the melonbot.