University featherweight battle

[Runsler]

As far as i understand, you'll only use the bot for "intern" combat, meaning just you and other students in the same module, right?
So i wouldn't care too much about safety rules or jerky drive style, since all competitors will have that (and it seems mandatory, so... no use in switching it vs. a somewhat expensive esc, and getting an unfair advantage, i think )

Only three considerations that could be done from that:
1. Mention that nowadays standart would be an esc, and the safety issue. could be your prof changes his mind due to that, making you use an ESC instead of MSC. But i think this solution was choosen mostly on budget questions or because they already lay somewhere in the university.

2. build a bot that doesn't need too fine driving. (So... a horizontal spinner for example), or choose wheel size (and therefore speed) rather a bit smaller (so slower) if aiming is more important than actual speed (for example in a vertical spinner).
Will drive a bit like steering any race games with a keyboard... many small tips on the keys to make wide curves.

3. With the MSC being rather fragile, a strong flip could be devasting. If you can aim right, and won't flip into nothing, with the recoil destroying your own bot



And for the pneumatic stuff... i never got into pneumatics, but:
"pressure" of a gas can be seen as how many gas atoms are in a given volume. (well, kinda.)
So if you have a given amount of atoms in the gas tank, and you operate a system with a higher pressure, you are very likely to blow out more atoms at once, making the tank last a shorter time.
But Pressure alone isn't the only thing to consider when trying to build something "powerful".
Pressure is just force per area (is my english right here?) -> p=F/A -> F=p*A
So you'd want a lot of force to flip the other bot. Building up a high pressure is one thing, but increasing the size of your system, mainly the area the pressure works against also increases the force you get out of it.

And since weight is always the biggest struggle:
someone actually used that for a bot should explain what size/weight ratio of all the parts needed is most efficient.

Also, as always, leverage is important. so how far from your hinge will your gas system apply its force, and how far from the hinge will the enemy bot be at maximum?