Barróg - Featherweight Lifter Build Diary

[Shooty]

Roboriots 2023 (& 2024):

Ireland’s annual live event has continued to truck along, and they’ve continued to be another chance for me to mess around with my featherweights, basically untouched from previous years. There’s not as much to talk about in these event reports compared to exclusively FW competitions, and while the bots do go through some changes, I’ll save a more detailed build update for my next entry, where I’ll talk about North Down Havoc 2024. Due to how late these updates have been, I’m going to combine both last year and this year’s events into one update. Video content is a little tricky for 2023 since the team which provides wonderful footage of so many live events, Team Ironclads, wasn’t present for that year, so you may have to hop across several channels if you want the full event report experience.


The full squad ready to go for 2023.

Making it to the events themselves were often some of the most difficult parts of the journeys, particularly in 2023 when the family car broke down the day before the event itself, potentially stranding everything in Galway. We were also running a secret third bot for this competition, my four bar FW cluster half which still really hasn’t been given a proper name (Kill O’Herlihy in 2023, Very Schnakey in 2024).

2023 Fight 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC8TvTwDFJc (I don't know why this link isn't working, it's formatted exactly like the others and I've tried to fix it for 15 minutes, but I suppose this all comes with dealing with a website that has not been updated since the Cameron government)

2023 Final:


2024 Full Tournament:


The main Barróg (mostly driven by my dad) performed pretty similar to how it has over the past few events, both using the new fancy linac and the old cheap linac. Self-righting continues to be a strength for the design, managing to roll back from any angle, and the drive setup continues to push things around both normally and when an opponent is lifted and grabbed. The metal forks do a good job getting underneath opponents even when not totally flush with the ground (accidentally mounted them the wrong way round for the first fight of 2024 but still did OK). They do catch an awful lot on the ground however, and there were a few occasions where the bot gets wedged into the arena walls hard.


The pit table for 2023, shared with the 2HDF team.

Barróg Doom continues to have strong moments, although the quality of the lifter differed wildly between fights. I noticed in preparing for the 2024 event that basically all of the bolts involved with the lifter assembly had either loosened (where the two drill motors meet), or had sheared entirely. I actually had a total failure in Doom’s second fight in 2024, which in hindsight should have been prevented, and to be honest I can’t complain too much if the main lifting mechanism on this robot has only suffered a single failure in 5 years. In the future I will likely swap these bolts out every year. When Doom is working it’s a real crowd pleaser, though again it would be undone a few times by a not-perfect ground game, as well as getting stuck under arena walls, costing it event wins in both 2023 and 2024.


Very Schnakey back in 2023 with the four-bar setup. This setup already was poor without a metal floor, which would be the only way I could self-right. The fact the lifter got caught on so many things just made it worse.

Very Schnakey (this will be the name I’ll go with for now) had a very anonymous 2023, where it lost a side of drive early on, and was also flipped over into a position where it couldn’t self-right without magnets. For 2024 I decided to run it in the invertible wedge config and even lend the robot out to Isaac of Team Immersion. The bot was not the most effective pusher thanks to the weight disadvantage, but it was mobile, manoeuvrable, and surprisingly durable, surviving numerous tumbles. Special shout out to the bot being used as a test dummy for Amicide’s flipper test, which literally sent the bot into the catch fencing of the arena, and kept running regardless.


A close look at the drive side which had the failed wheel in 2023. Not the most informative photo if I'm honest.

Outside of the standard wheel swap now and then (of which I’m hoping to fix with a new wheel design going forward), I’m once again happy with the performance of the robots in these events. These events are basically just an excuse for me to meet up with friends, have some wonderful conversations with people in the crowds, and toss some robots around for a few glorious minutes, which is why most of us do this to be honest. Shout outs to all of the usual Irish and British teams in attendance, and a special shout out to the Two Headed Death Flamingo team in 2023 for the weekend together, and to Team Penny for finally allowing us to meet, hopefully there can be some more collabs between the Irish and Northern Irish scenes in the future!


The full squad for 2024. Not that many photos, but another fun event regardless!