Electronic assisted weapons??

OK,

This is a bit in the future as my first bot will be a simple push/ram bot, but I have a question.

I have an idea for a weapon that would use sensor/microcontroller to decide when the best time to fire/activate the weapon is based on the proximity of a target.

Having read through the FRA rules etc, there doesnt seem to be much information other than there must be a way to deactivate it and it is upto the event organisers whether to allow such a thing. Oh and a fail safe of course.

Does anyone have any opinions/experience?

Cheers

PeteC

most of use will not do this for one reason only, you introduce another piece in your robot that might/can/will fail.

KISS is usually the best way to go in robot combat, although the advantages of a system like that are pretty obvious.

There is no rule against it. However you will need to explain in details how it works and what safety features you put in there so it doesnt activate on the bench by accident.

Also there is no guarantee that it wont go off in the arena when you dont want it to.

A proximity sensor triggered weapon isnt against the rules, but would be checked carefully by the event organiser no doubt. Carefully implemented it could be up to the job and be perfectly safe - but it is worth considering how the sensor would differentiate between the opponent and an arena wall for example.

For now, as Leo suggested, its probably best to get it all working well by remote control before expanding on the technology - it would afterall be another thing to fail in combat.

quote:

Also there is no guarantee that it wont go off in the arena when you dont want it to.

To me that is less of an issue, only when someone needs to get close to the robot to disarm it it absolutely needs to stay still, and you really need to convince me and other tech-checkers of that fact.

This may be a far-fetched proposal, but you could always try and get in touch with Mike Franklin (101). If I recall, the spike on his robot was fired automatically, so he might be able to give some helpful info on it. Failing that I think there was an article on it featured in one of the Real Robots magazines

I believe Mike had a remote arm button on 101 which basically allowed the weapon to fire and the rest was down to the sensor.

Hi,

Thank you for your responses. Sounds like my idea is similar to mikes in that I would tell the robot that it is approaching a target and to fire. The sensor would determine the exact time at which it was to fire. The weapon would then go to standby until recieving another request. So its sort of a semi-autonomous system - for safety reasons.

Cheers

Pete

Design the unit so you could switch it on/off from a spare channel on your transmitter, and also have a light on the bot so people can see if the sensor is switched on or off.

This means when its off it wont fire the weapon, also the addition of a light means anyone approaching the bot will know if the sensor is on or off.

...sounds like a simple solution?

Chris - ^_^

Oh no, i see a new LED discussion coming up. :)