Bot Patrol an Antweight Battlebot Recovery Vehicle

Lynxmotion Rovers, Sumo, and Tracked
1

I attend the Central Illinois Robotics Club spring competition annually. Each year we end up using a broom handle or just chucking a small child into the battlebox to retrieve disabled robots. This year I am bringing Bot Patrol my Antweight Battlebot Recovery Vehicle. This bot isn’t an Antweight though, it’s actually pretty heavy. lol :smiley: I used 3 HSR-5990 servos on the gripper. It lifted about a pound with little effort. The bot is constructed, but I’m still working on the RC controller. This is a relatively easy project. It’s going to be fun. lol

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2

Jim,

It did seem strange that with a room full of high-tech robots and talented builders we always resorted to a long stick or broom handle as a solution :wink:

That look’s awesome! Make sure you test it up to 3lbs as well for disabled Beetleweights. Also a brush or vacuum attachment would be neat for cleaning away small debris and airsoft BBs from Mech wWarfare matches. I had considered throwing a Roomba in the ring for this but it takes too long to cover the entire battle box surface.

3

Looks like you are having some fun!

I like the idea of a brush.

As for RC Controller, the DIY remote would work great!

Looks great
Kurt

4

Yup I’m looking to do an even more custom DIY for it. Rather than control the arm with joysticks we are making a similar version of the arm with modified servos that sits on the DIY transmitter. So when you move the arm on the transmitter the arm connected to the receiver moves exactly the same.

5

That sounds interesting. You might want to consider encoders (AustriaMicro) instead of pots.

A recent post had this link to a R/C servo conversion:

letsmakerobots.com/node/18615

You’d only need the pot replacement (and a uP to read the encoders).

Alan KM6VV

6

Baa! What on earth for? :open_mouth: I’m connecting these pots to an atom pros analog inputs. Nothing could be easier than reading the analog input. lol :slight_smile:

7

:laughing: bots saving bots. :laughing: Its always cool to see hobby robots used for a practical real world purpose. Hope it works.

8

A very cool project Jim!

Sounds like a good solution for a very intuitive and easy control system, almost like an animatronic or puppeteer control. Looking forward to see some custom DIY transmitter stuff again. :smiley:

9

Bot Patrol proved very useful this past weekend at the 2011 Central Illinois Bot Brawl. It was used to extract robots and parts several times throughout the day and provided a vastly superior retrieval method compared to using brooms and other long utensils. Of course Bot Patrol also accomplished all this while looking fantastic with bright lights and powerful treads. A big thanks to Jim for the help!

Here’s video of one recovery operation completed using Bot Patrol:

10

Thanks for the video Dan!

11

I like the gripper pickup! I’m hoping to do that with MicroMoose, and cheese!

Thanks for the video.

Alan KM6VV