With the end of the year coming up with only one, perhaps two events left for me, here is a round-up of Team Kaizen's performance for the last year.

  • Jibril has easily been the most active robot this year and it has been an absolute pig all year. Pretty much everything in the robot has failed at least once, from the electrics blowing, the drive gearbox failing, the Scythe gearbox breaking on more than one occasion and a minor fire in the robot to name the ones I can think of. Despite this, it has been getting better over the year and I think has definitely made a name for itself in the MW class. The new 2.0 build is coming along and I am planning to début this next year.
  • Azriel was built solely as a live event robot and its two outings at EXR Bolton and RL Grantham have been relatively successful, if not entirely effective. The rebuild of the machine to brushless has been a bit of a learning curve and is still ongoing.
  • Shu! fought only the once at the BW European championship and suffered badly from a blown ESC at the event. The Honey Badger 4.0 suffered from poor electrics at the Euros but did reasonably decently at the Extreme S.T.E.M event.
  • Amai and Ikari all fought at the various BotFest events and at Ant Freeze, Ramu at BotFest 3, Osu at Ant Freeze and BotFest 2. There has been wins for these robots but all have struggled to be effective.
  • The BotFest events themselves have been doing OK in of themselves, getting well over 20 entries per event this year.


A few memorable moments for me this year has been:

  • The fight between Jibril and Earthquake at EXR Portsmouth. I really want a rematch next year.
  • Azriel surviving a few of the melees at RL Grantham and nearly coming out as a winner at EXR Bolton for one of the Featherweight melees.
  • Part of the winning team at EXR Bolton with Jibril.
  • The Scythe on Jibril finally working at EXR Cheltenham.
  • Surprising myself with a 3rd place finish with Ikari at Extreme S.T.E.M.


This year has been tough, much tougher than I expected it to be, both in and out of the arena. I've been to every Extreme Robots event this year and both the Burgess Hill and Grantham Robots Live events along with running the BotFest events, attending Ant Freeze and the BW European championships, often doing a single day per event. That has led to some frankly maddening mileages. It is approaching 4,500 miles for the year. That is a lot for what has been effectively a single person team all year and this isn't sustainable for me to keep up.

I will have to put a stop on the single day events where they are over a certain mileage and I am on my own. I am mooting 200 which, for me, rules out Burgess Hill, Maidstone and Colchester from what I can think of (Portsmouth is the exception). The reason why I've been going to these events all year is primarily to get arena time with the Middleweight for the championship which, I think, ultimately did pay off. I don't have a particular education in mechanics and a lot of the mechanical stuff in Jibril has been a massive learning curve for me. The MWs are definitely not FWs. :P

For 2020, I'll be doing the following:

  • Touching up the team branding a touch. The current one is OK but a bit... bland? I'll be keeping the 2020 branding under wraps until I've finished the year.
  • I've been planning a comeback of Kaizen. I still have the 2x 500W scooter motors that are massive. Pass on when that will be worked on but you'll know when it is (though quite how I am going to fit it into a Smart City-Coupe CDI.. hmmm).
  • New versions of Jibril and Azriel. Azriel is getting the now tried and tested 15.75:1 + 1800W F30-150 arrangement from the current version of Jibril. Jibril is getting a A28-150 and a faster, more reliable Scythe along with a whole bunch of upgrades from the lessons learnt this year. The MW class will continue to be my main focus.
  • Maybe a new BotFest arena along with a new Osu 3.0 and a new Ant courtesy from an idea my Dad had.


Finally, a massive thank you from me to everyone who has donated their time and advice (and parts :P). I mean this seriously, the robots simply wouldn't be where they are now without them and next year, I can take what I've learned from you all and advance the team on.