As you may know, Robodojo occurred once again on Sunday and Wedgeley attended. This time, there were no major changes to the machine, we just patched up the minor damage from the last event and fettled a few things. After last time, we pretty much have a machine that functions so it was a chance to get slightly accustomed to driving it! The only functional change I made was to grind down the front pair of teeth, the idea being that the 2nd pair of teeth would then engage first when lowering the jaw, against most things at least. I noticed last time that a "bite" would often tip the rear of the other robot down, thus lifting us up at the front and thus out wheels off the ground. This was down to the geometry of the teeth and lower jaw, so the modification is intended to make the jaw pin the opponent horizontally rather than tipping them over.

Anyway, report!

Firstly, in a break with tradition, we drove up to Sherburn on Sunday morning rather than Saturday night as Becky was playing in a concert until 9:30 PM. However, we did have chips and a pint of Timothy Taylor's Landlord, maintaining an important aspect of our pre-event ritual.

On the drive up we decided on the following event objectives:
  • Maintain at least an even win/loss card
  • Score some ranking points (i.e., finish in the top 8 again)


The drive up on Sunday was fine and we arrived in good time for a cuppa and a sausage cob. Here's the bench we found ourselves upon:


We actually ended up right next to a someone who lives just down the road from us in south Notts. There were a few familiar faces on the bench too, along with a couple of new ones (including a notorious toaster).

Onto the fights...

ROUND 1: PROJECT FEAR
After driving for three of our five fights last time, I left Becky and Simon to toss a coin for the first two this time. Simon lost and so took the controls against Project Fear...


This was a good shoving match, and we got in some good grapples despite not really being able to take full advantage due to a lack of pushing power. The judge ruled in our favour, so we were off to a good start!

ROUND 2: BREAD DEAD REDEMPTION
This was Becky's turn to drive. I was hoping for this matchup, having watched BDR come together on the forum.


The dustpans proved very effective at keeping us contained in the corners, and with the robot still a bit twitchy when moving off from stopped Becky couldn't get up to speed and move back into the centre. The judge gave it to BDR but, despite losing, this was another good match, and it's good to last a full three minutes. Congrats to Andrew on this one, very impressive driving for a first event and the dustpans were a stroke of genius!

ROUND 3: THE TRAGIC ROUNDABOUT
Tragic is another robot I've been wanting to have a go at. It's a regular attendee in the Sportman contest and for me epitomises what Sportsman is all about. I thought it was genius the first time I saw it in January and it's always entertaining.


Unfortunately, the open arena meant no flails for Tragic, which made this rather one-sided. There was a moment there when we both got stuck on the floor, but in the end this was probably my most "clinical" bit of driving so far. I look forward to facing this robot again when it's allowed to have a proper weapon! This was also a good test for the tooth modification, which seems to have worked at least partially.

ROUND 4: VETTEL'S VENGEANCE
With three rounds fought, it was time to randomise again and I was selected to drive. I think this opponent has been seen before, as a cluster with Boring Wedgebot, but was now under the control of a new team. They'd had some rotten luck in the first couple of rounds, getting stuck on the arena in various ways, so I was hoping for a slightly better match for them (although obviously I still hoped they'd lose, I'm not that nice).


This was a really fun match, and indeed I got both of my wishes with the judge giving us the win. About a minute in to the fight I turned on the gyro to see what difference it made and the answer was, actually loads. Not on driving at speed, but I just stopping and starting, which otherwise often resulted in a bit of mad spinning. VV was incredibly close to the ground, which obviously caused them some driving issues but certainly stopped us getting under them from any angle...

STOP PRESS! THERE IS UNEXPECTEDLY A ROUND 5!
Due to the absence of a full-combat event in parallel, there was a bit more time for fights and so we got another bit of the cherry...

ROUND 5: STABBY McUNICORNFACE
This is a great machine and a great team. Nuff said. Also, Stabby is the PERFECT size to fit in our jaws. I was looking forward to this one. Simon was selected to drive again.


I'm not going to post the Thelma and Louise gif again but yeah.

There was some great driving by Simon here, and I think it was the twitchy moving off that caused the problem in the end (the gyro was turned off). Would've been fun to go the distance but all credit to Stabby!

* * *

EPILOGUE
I think we were technically tied for 8th place at the end of 5 rounds, but there was no play off (I assume because none of the robots so ranked could place in the year's tournament overall). Still, I think we can call that just about meeting our targets for the day, and with 3 wins to 2 losses I was really chuffed by how we did.

It's been quite a journey over the last year, going from a few bits to a (sort of) functioning robot in January and now in December actually winning more fights than we lose! Really looking forward to the next year.

I'd also like to say a huge thank you to Ian, Alex, Keith and their army of helpers who put on the Robodojo events. If it wasn't for those guys I doubt we'd ever have gotten around to building a robot.

I don't think Wedgeley will be getting any major upgrades from this point on, but we have some plans in the pipeline for his successor... watch this space!

Cheers,

Sam