Team Health & Safety - First Time Builder

[Zenith]

WeeWoo at Bugglebots Season 2
25th and 26th of May 2019, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK

After Season 1 and our glorious exit against Maximum Ogredrive we wanted to evolve WeeWoo and take the concept a step further. We wanted to add the ability of dealing with non-spinner opponents, so both Cosmin and I set out to make a weaponized WeeWoo; Cosmin would make a spinner-Wee, and Greg would build a grabber-Woo. In February 2019 there was an event at UWE where we decided to test for Bugglebots, and we hoped it would prepare us adequately for the new series. It did in a way, though during the UWE tournament we weren’t able to run the new versions as we were pitted against evil spinners. Little did we know this was a sign of things to come...

IMG_20190516_205749.jpg

For Bugglebots, Greg completely rebuilt the anti-spinner Woo from the ground up with a new chassis and internals, and also updated grabber-Woo with a bigger and lighter jaw compared to the one run at UWE.

In the new season Cosmin also ran his vicious spinner Daedalus (which had won the aforementioned UWE event), leaving us with a problem - as there is a 1-driver-1-robot rule, Wee needed a replacement driver. Dave Weston, who would already be present at the event and whose experience with clusterbot Crackers ‘n Smash in the past was valuable, took up the mantle.

At the event though, our hearts sank when he heard the draw for round 1. We’d be starting off against Drizzle, one of the most powerful spinners at the event, which we’d also faced in the first round of the UWE event. All of this work on a weaponized WeeWoo and we wouldn’t be showing it off in our first fight. I was a bit bummed out, but we knew that this was bound to happen with a field as strong as this season’s. We just didn’t want it to happen immediately.

80381926_459693358047229_4480877923229761536_n.jpg

On the other hand though, with these machines pitted against each other the fight would guarantuee to be a high-energy match-up with some proper entertainment for the crowd… which is exactly what you need in a show like Bugglebots. We drew up a plan: we would run the forked WeeWoo, and Wee (David) would go and try stop Drizzle from spinning up, with Woo (me) following suit. This worked okay, with us getting Drizzle bouncing around into the wall and floor on numerous occasions. Doing so, we hoped that Drizzle would eventually break itself as it did at the UWE event in February, or fall down the pit.

However, when Wee was stuck on the arena wall with its huge magnet, it was all down to Woo. I gave it my best shot, but when Drizzle clipped the left rear axle right in the middle and bent it upward, locking the drive on that side and letting the magnets drag on the floor, we knew that it was all over.

Now, Woo was actually still working at this point, but with Drizzle still fully functional, we knew we were up against it. We had the loser’s melee to do after and taking more damage (which, being a robot half the weight against one of the most powerful vertical spinners in the competition, was quite likely) could’ve made things much worse for us in the pits, so after tanking one more massive hit to see if a miracle could happen I reluctantly let go of the controls and let Woo be counted out. It just was not to be - Drizzle deserved this win.

Luckily, back at the pit table, Woo only needed an axle and wheel replaced and it was good to go again. Upon closer inspection, Tom amazingly had managed to hit Woo’s left rear axle dead center of the axle’s bolt head; you could hardly notice the place where it was hit.

Anyways, the losers melee then. Now, clusters typically don’t do melees all too well since you lose the numbers advantage, but as wedge Jay and lifter Catalyst were joining us in the melee, we could now show off the weaponized WeeWoo; the vertical spinner Wee, and the grabber Woo. We couldn’t run these two against Drizzle as we had sacrificed their armor to free up weight for weaponry, so they were not a good option against heavy spinners.

IMG_20190525_170035.jpg

But now, they got out to play… and we just went for it. David went up against Catalyst with spinner-Wee, and I took on Jay with grabber-Woo. David set about kicking about Catalyst, tearing off its front wedge which afterwards turned out to retire Catalyst’s chassis. I got a clamp on Jay, but it seemed Woo could’ve done with some more downforce as it was a bit of a faff to get Jay where we wanted. Things went okay though, right up until the moment they didn’t and Wee gyro-ed into the pit. James then tried to get Woo stacked on its side… but luckily Woo could selfright with the claw. This only worked once though, as soon after Woo lost drive on one side - as it turned out, I hadn’t fastened the right drive motor tightly enough and it had torn a wire loose. Catalyst turned Woo over, and tried to get both Jay and Woo in the pit… only for Jay to escape just when Catalyst and Woo went into the pit together. As a result, Jay was through to the heat semis.

A disappointment for us, ofcourse. WeeWoo had been iterated to a point that we felt it could do better than in series 1, but this season luck was simply not on our side. It did mean though that we would be back for the Dung Beetle later on.

Now, the lineup of that rumble was a page turner as well, with S1 Heat Finalists and Grand Finalists sentenced to have one last bout for the Wooden Spoon. We would run the wedges this time as vicious spinner Rev 4 was in there as well, meanwhile making sure that WeeWoo had run in all possible configurations in the new series.

We even contemplated putting on Tina the Playmobil mascot atop Woo (as seen at the end of the event video posted a few weeks back) for added hilarity, but alas this made Woo overweight.

Things went better than we’d hoped really; we pushed a few others around and despite us both being turned over (which removes the magnetic downforce and makes the twins handle like they’re on ice) Wee eventually survived until only Snappy was left to render both Wee and Woo incapacitated in the pit. WeeWoo had come second in the Dung Beetle.

IMG_20190525_211546.jpg

Together with the boys with Rust in Pieces we tried getting a cluster-off to happen for either a whiteboard or UK v Rest of the World, but alas it was not to be. We felt bad about doing as badly in the tournament as we had, but as the line-up of the Dung Beetle showed, we were not alone in feeling like this. The field of 2019 was insanely strong, and despite doing worse than last time performance-wise we hope we still managed to put on a good show for everyone watching… this, for us, has always been the most important thing of all. Win or lose, the only real winners should be the viewing audience.

We found this new season is a giant leap forward from the the first one, and this would never have been the case without the volunteers and teams putting in all of the effort. Competing in it is nothing short of an honour.

Which brings us to the next bit.

Should season 3 come to fruition, WeeWoo will be applying for the last time. We feel that WeeWoo was unlucky this season in both its draw and its fights and it deserves another chance to proof its metal in a proper send-off, but after that the siblings of WeeWoo will rest on their laurels. Cosmin and I originally set out to make clusters relevant in beetleweights back in Season 1, and ever since WeeWoo first appeared more clusters have appeared on the weight class that are fit to take its mantle. It feels like a nice story for other builders to continue, which Rust in Pieces illustrated perfectly in the new season. We also want to keep progressing ourselves too, as we enjoy developing and creating new robots to keep things interesting both for the show and for ourselves (see Head For The Exit, and Cosmin’s Daedalus).

IMG_20191124_134302.jpg

We do feel enormously humbled by all the positive feedback we’ve gotten in both seasons for our cluster though, so that’s why as far as we’re concerned, this won’t have been the last you’ve seen of WeeWoo’s insanity. In fact, there might be some new stuff in the pipeline already…

WHEN I SAY WEE… roll on Season 3!