Damn, there was me thinking I could use my 40MHz sets for the kilobots since they're gonna become redundant once my FWs are on 2.4GHz.
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Damn, there was me thinking I could use my 40MHz sets for the kilobots since they're gonna become redundant once my FWs are on 2.4GHz.
What do you mean IF !! :shock: ... It damn well better be!!! :shock:Quote:
Originally Posted by dgr
Geoff sent you an email about the arena specs and basic rules etc just to see what you think.
Can we assign our own arena marshals? And what do you have to do to be allowed to tech check robots. Cos when theres just a few of us battling and testing in a unit it could be hard to get a tech checker to come along, bet were planning on recording all the battles and challenges etc so even the small invite events will need a tech checker there so we dont get shouted are for running an event ouside of the fra rules.
So anyone doing a flipper, axe, hammer, crusher or clusterbot yet? I think were mainly spinners atm.
iv got none of the above :mrgreen:
If I do eventually build something (have to finish my ant first) then I have plans for a horizontal 'crusher' (more of a clamp) if I can find some half decent worm gears and wheels for not much money.
I'm thinking of a servo-powered grab-and-lift arm for a weapon (also looked into flamethrowers :P) so something a little different. Might build a spinner too though, can't pass up the chance to build a kilo Drumroll :)
that would be cool. Get kenny to make you a tiny drum
jack if we are doing it proper and by fra rules i don't think they will allow a flamethrower
Flame throwers would be safe enough in a grade 1 arena like toms making, but it will get anoying having chard polycarbonate arena walls. Tom I'll do tech checking if you want, I'm an fra registered tech checker. It would make sense to print of the standard tech forms and bring them to the event.
I might make a Pneumatic flipper as a mini 360 is already being done.
ok mouldy chief tech checker for kilobots, will also take bribes in the way of kfc
UK Kilobots.
The Arena.
The overall size of the arena will be 2000mm x 2000mm. The arena can be used as a 2000mm x 2000mm combat box with no out of the arena zone and also the arena can be used as a 1500mm x 1500mm arena by inserting a removable 50mm high steel internal wall leaving a 250mm out of the arena zone. The arena floor will be 1000mm from the ground and the arena roof will be 800mm above the arena floor. The loading and unloading of robots will be done through one of two doors located on opposited sides of the arena. The doors will be hinged with a polycarbonate surround to ensure there are no gaps in the arena walls. Arena hazards will be interchangeable, all powered arena hazards will be able to be isolated from outside of the arena.
Arena Frame - 30mm x 30mm x 3mm steel box section
Arena Floor - 4 1000mm x 1000mm x 3mm steel plates
Internal Wall - 50mm x 5mm Steel
Arena Wall - 10mm Polycarb with 100mm x 5mm steel around the bottom
Arena Roof - 10mm Polycarb
Wall Frame - 40mm x 40mm x 3mm steel Angle
Roof Frame - 40mm x 40mm x 3mm steel Angle with 75mm x 5mm brace
Build Rules.
The weight limit will be 1.362 kg (3 lbs), Robots will be allowed to be 0% over the weight limit. 1.362 kg is the maximum weight allowed including all consumables. The robots will be built the the FRA
Featherweight build rules. IC engines will not be allowed. 2.4Ghz radio gear is mandatory.
Battle Rules & Judging
Battles will have a 3 - 5 minute time limit depending on the type of battle. Mini challenges will each have there own specified time limits.
Battles that do not end with a clear winner, i.e the other robot or robots are immobilized or out of the arena will be judged on style, control, damage and aggression.
Safety.
This weight class will follow all the FRA featherweight safety rules, so sharp edge protection, cradles and locking pins on active weapons must be used. All robots will be tech checked before they are allowed to enter the arena. Tech checking will take place on your pit table or you will be directed to take your robot to a tech checker at another table. Spinning weapons will be tested for fail safing inside an arena or enclosure that has been graded and passed to allow the use of spinning weapons. Robots will be activated by the robot owner or driver of the robot before a Battle or challenge, Robots will be disabled by an arena marshal at the end of a battle or challenge unless the robot owner or driver is directed to disable his/her own robot by an arena marshal.
The way antweights works (or is meant to work) is that, if judging is required, three of the people watching the fight who are also competing are nominated as judges before the fight, people who are deemed to be fair, and then the people taking part in the fight have the opportunity to object to anyone they may think will judge their robot unfairly so they can be changed until both participants are happy that the 3 selected judges will be fair to both teams. Then the fight happens and if judging is needed, the three give a verdict based on the 4 criteria.
I just thought I'd flag this up as a possible way of doing things, there may be better ways, but this seems to have worked well in the past.
Now there is a rule here in America that all robots with AM radios must NOT have an active weapon. Are AM radios permitted in this class?
Quote:
Featherweight build rules. IC engines will not be allowed. 2.4Ghz radio gear is mandatory
lol, am radio :)
Well, there will probably be a lot of rookie builders entering this class with their own hackbot toys since some may not know how to build any complete active-weaponed bots (I've been fighting for 5 years and I STILL don't know how! lol)
So I think if this class doesn't have the active-weapon rule, it could help builders still new to the sport be able to work with a higher weight class rather than just the ants.
Nothing mentioned in the rules there about active weapon requirements. Are we going for active weapons are encouraged? Or active weapons are mandatory?
Or (just had a thought) what about, since there are other challenges such as sumo and obstacle course, have it so that active weapons are mandatory for combat, but not a requirement for sumo, obstacles etc. That way someone who doesn't have a weapon can still build and compete in some challenges. Or would that be adding an element of unnecessary confusion?
This isn't going to be the class for new builders. Full combat, with some crazy spinners on the way. If you don't know how to build a machine to survive a spinner battle then I wouldn't bother. Throw a toy in and it won't last beyond the first hit.
I'm still all in favour of an active weapon rule or a compromise like i mentioned earlier on in the thread.
hmmm flame throwers and spinners? Wonder if i could combine the two :P
Are there limmits on the size of the robots? :uhoh:
Active weapon is just encouraged at the moment, But if you dont have an active weapon make the robot exciting, somthing that will be entertaining, as soon as people start using indestructable boxes we will have to go enforced. I think with it been such a small weight class we will be able to convince people to build active weaponed robots anyway.
People that want to be annoying and build boxes will get round the rule by puting a spike on a micro servo and say its a weapon.
Theres no size limit. The arena doors are going to be about 800mm - 1000mm wide and about 700mm high so if it fits through that its ok. The robots we know about that are being built are about 150-200mm square-ish
I'm a bit worried about this challenges aspect. Is that going to be an aspect of the competition, or a separate competition. Cos I'd hate to do well in the challenges only to have a spinner destroy me so I can't be repaired, and then have to do an obstacle course or whatever, I'd have to forfeit.
its part of the comp yes, like with all fights if your destroy'd, your destroy'd if you can't fix it you can't fight again
Dont worry Dave challenges wont be for a while yet. We will probably have it so when theres challenges as part of the comp they come before any battles if we do the whole comp in a day. There will be times when its just battle comps only. Then there will be white board fights and grudge matches. There we will be somthing similar to what Swannys doin with the challenge/chairmans trophy, but we will have that for singles and maybe tag team too. All depends on robot numbers and if everyone stays interested.
There will also be leader boards for challenges. So everyone can have a go at all the different challenges. Theres going to be challenges that arnt part of competition.
So there will be:
Main comp throughout the year. This will be a combination of challenge and battle points.
Leader board challenges. Challenges that can be taken at any time to be ranked on the leader board.
Battle comps, There will be a series of knockout rounds.
Day/weekend comps, challenges to gain points, robots with the most points go on to battle. Amount of robots put through to battle will depend on amount of robots entered.
Challenge trophys. These will be the same as what team bud are doing, 1 defence per event, cant re-challenge for the trophy untill champion has defended against 3 other robots after your failed challenge or the trophy changes hands.
To start with it will be mainly just battle comps. Then when we bring challenges out they will be just the leader board challenges. We will bring challenge trophys into it right at the start too. Then next year we can start the main comp.
Remember we want opinions and suggestions. I dont want it to be just how I would prefer it. This weight class is going to be created by the roboteers for the roboteers. We take suggestions a get everyones opinions on it, If a majority of the people agree with the suggestion and think it would improve the weight class and make it more entertaining to take part in and watch we go ahead with it.
We should try keep as much of the talk about the weightclass in this thread as possible, a few of us talk alot about it on RR chat and MSN so not everyone gets to see what some people suggest and what we discuss.
Let's make this class as open as possible in the hope of attracting new people to our sport. If someone wants to armour up a cheap RC car from the boot fair and drive it with a 27 MHz AM radio, they should be welcomed, provided they have a link and a power light. Of course, as Gary says, they won't last long. But the experience of being part of the roboteer community and actually taking part in a battle is a very powerful one and chances are they will come back with something better. Let's set the entry barrier as low as we can [both in money and build time] and see who we can attract.
I agree actually. I see this as a great way to test out theories, various armour, my welding and stuff like that in a relatively cheap environment before going to make things in 'big'. One thing we lack as a sport is testing facilitiesQuote:
Originally Posted by john_frizell
Andy
Perhaps this may be the chance to bring ladybird's revenge out of retirement...?
Agreed :) My first robot was awful but the experience I had at my first event is one of the best I've ever had.Quote:
Originally Posted by john_frizell
Now about these robot challenges, will they be like the RW Gauntlet with ramps, pits and obtrusions or any certain kinds of races? I think that would open a few eyes.
Like I said, Suggest things. Things like Sumo, Bowling, Football, Gauntlets, Tug of War.
Like if theres a gauntlet what would you like to see?
We cant run 27mhz, this weight class is running under modified/upgraded featherweight rules, and they dont allow 27mhz in the featherweight class.
I think it's easy enough to get a robot running on 40mhz or 2 gig. I mean, I'm all for encouraging new builders, definately, but we don't want to make the class unattractive to experienced roboteers either. I mean, I don't know if it'd be taken that seriously as a category if it's just full of modified RC cars or toys.
I mean, if a rookie wants to join in, it'd be better for them to get into ants first and work their way up. Antweights are a much easier and much less punishing weight category for a learner than this one could turn out to be.
Could always start up a badge of honour system on how many RC car machines you'd taken out :rofl:Quote:
I mean, I don't know if it'd be taken that seriously as a category if it's just full of modified RC cars or toys.
Tom said:
We cant run 27mhz, this weight class is running under modified/upgraded featherweight rules, and they dont allow 27mhz in the featherweight class.
The FRA rule set, effective 2008, as currently reached through the Roaming Robots site, lists 27 MHz as approved for feathers. There were certainly proposals to change that but I don't remember the proposals being approved. Does anyone have a link to the current FRA rule set?
And I would not worry about making the class unattractive to experienced roboteers by filling it with modified RC cars or toys. A proper robot built by an experienced builder will clear them out quickly. And if it does fill up in this way, then it will mean that we have attracted a whole new group of people to our sport. They will quickly learn to build more robust machines. After all, the first feathers to appear on Robot Wars were RC cars in armour and look where that took us.
And I like Garry's 'badge of honour' idea. The more of these RC car machines the better!
I suppose they could, will have to get a few more opinoins on it, By the time things get serious any people have built more advanced robot there will propbably be a 2.4ghz rule anyway. So people get posting 2.4ghz only or allow 40mhz and 27mhz
Iv created a micro poll, Vote for what you want.
What Radio Frequencies Should Be Allowed:
http://micropoll.com/t/KDjP0ZBBCo
Tell us on here whos voting for what still.
Bloody hell 9 votes already. Didnt even know that many were interested. So common whos voting? 9 votes so far and no 1s posted.
Just voted - I voted for all the frequencies, but really I was just voting for 2.4GHz and 40MHz. I forgot about 459MHz because not many people use that but it is viable. Not so keen on 27MHz as there are about six frequencies available for the Futaba Txs and many RC toys using 'splat' frequencies (some channel on the 27MHz band, but which is unknown) so I think interference on that frequency will be occuring a lot more than the others.
I don't think that 40MHz should be written off for this class though. It has worked well enough in the past for every weight class (with exceptions, naturally) and still works well currently. A lot of perfectly good 40MHz units will be getting retired in a matter of months because of the new FW rule so I think this class is a good place for them to be put to good use again. If anyone was building from scratch, I would recommend they get a 2.4GHz unit purely for the signal quality and cost and if I was buying a new unit I would get a 2.4GHz set as well but if I was building a kilobot and had a high-quality Futaba 6-channel programmable transmitter sitting on a shelf gathering dust I would much prefer to use that, especially since I've recently adotped a 'recycle as many old bot parts as you can when building a new machine' approach. I'm also quite partial to my blue Skysport 6 controller; it was my first ever transmitter (and was a pocket-money-saving feat at £120!), been used in every robot competition I've attended, has never let me down and still works perfectly, so I would not want to see it sitting doing nothing or having to put it up for sale because it's taking up space.
Kilobots drivers will also be closer to the arena and the arena is obviously smaller so the chances of having stuttering drive because your robot is miles away at the other side of the arena are going to be a lot less.
What about going with 40MHz to start off with and see how it manages? If it seems that robots are acting in an uncontrollable fashion as a result of the frequency then okay, rule it out but if it is doing a good job then stick with it. I'm not underestimating the power these things will pack - every weight class of combat robotics is inherently dangerous - but with the right safety procedures (links, failsafes etc, which are already in place) using 40MHz should pose no great risk. A quick final point; lots of us already use 2.4GHz and wouldn't want to go back to 40MHz regardless of the weight class so there might not be many kilobots made that would be operating on 40MHz.
I also voted for all frequencies as it is likely to allow more people to use their old radios, but feel that 2.4 GHz should be encouraged.