Antweight Combat Robot
Updates for Spring 2023 are in the works but check out what we did in 2022!
Fall 2022
Overview: My team developed an ant-weight (1 pound) combat robot dubbed "McSpinner." McSpinner was designed and built according to SPARC regulations and competes in local competitions.
Winner of Duke Fall 2022 Combat Robotics Competition!
Our team consisted of 4 Duke University undergraduate students:
- Pragyat Khanal
- Ryan Chen
- Shaan Narayan (me!)
- Sahej Bhatia
Our team was guided under the advisement of Dr. Tyler Bletsch.
Design Process: After learning about the electronics involved with an ant-weight combat robot, our team constructed a wiring harness consisting of a battery, two motor controllers, three motors (two brushed motors for the wheels and a brushless motor for our weapon), and a drone radio controller. After this, our team constructed a bare-bones chassis to fine-tune our driving capabilities and verified that we could trigger our brushless motor. We then moved on to designing our chassis and weapon. We opted to create a "vertical spinner," a class of robot that wields a vertically rotating weapon bar. After many iterations of our chassis (designed in SolidWorks and then 3D printed) and weapon mount, we arrived at our final solution.
Our final solution consisted of a 3D-printed TPU chassis reinforced by FR-4 armor. The front of the chassis includes a wedge to pin enemy robots, and the back incorporates a guard to prevent the robot's off button from being shut off during a match. The chassis also contains wheel guards and houses all of the electronics safely according to SPARC regulations.
The weapon was designed from armored steel and driven directly from our brushless motor. We used two variations of the weapon: a straight bar for general combat and a curved bar for weapons with brittle armor.
The wheels were also 3D-printed out of TPU, and a silicon coating was applied to them to increase traction. Both the wheels and the weapon bar were reinforced with lock-tight to ensure they would remain functional during battle.
Results: McSpinner was incredibly successful and won Duke's end-of-semester competition capitalized by a climatic final where an early collision disabled both robot weapons! Our robot packed a massive punch for its 1-pound weight and was easy to drive in combat. The main weakness we discovered was that our brushless motor axle would experience shear failure when two opposing weapons collided. Videos from our competition can be seen to the left.
While we were thrilled to win the event after starting from scratch, we hope to improve our design and defend our title by improving our armoring techniques and adding a weapon clutch to reduce the forces acting on our brushless motor.