Competition: SCAR May Metal Massacre 2023
SCAR (Society of Combat Attack Robots) May Metal Massacre was my first ever out-of-state competition for combat robotics. With that excitement, we showed up a day early and got to watch some of the first day’s fights. I brought only my Beetleweight, Piano. Since Beetleweights didnt compete until Sunday, I had plenty of time to explore the venue on Saturday and watch the finals.
On Sunday, Piano was ready to go. It cleared safeties with no issues and was one of the first robots ready.
Fight Report:
My first fight was set against a bot called “Droopy.” Droopy is a dual horizontal spinner robot that uses no wheels. Instead, it moves by speeding up and slowing down the slightly tilted spinners to shuffle. Because Droopy uses non-conventional locomotion, it gets a weight bonus. That weight is mainly dedicated to its spinners, making Droopy a scary robot that hits hard and is hard to hit. My strategy going in was to attempt to break one of the weapons and then control the fight. However, it did not go this way, as on one of the first engagements, the entire wedge of piano was ripped off along with the left top panel. Piano was still able to move, but my battery was visible. Not wanted to risk a fire that could damage my electronics, I tapped out.
Luckily, I had a spare chassis, so Piano was not out of the competition yet. Next I fought Team 1, a more conventional horizontal spinner. This fight went far more to plan. I was able to engage quickly, keeping my lifter arm out of the way until I broke Team 1’s spinner, then I was able to control the pace of the fight from there. I was named winner of the fight by Judges Decision.
My final fight of the day was against Record Scatch, another horizontal spinner. I used the same strategy as I did against Team 1, lifting the arm and attempting to break their weapon before using my lifter arm to control the match. However, I missed the box rush due to my drive being somewhat twitchy and then I made another driving error, leaving the side of my robot inline with the spinner of Record Scratch. They peeled off my wheel guard, spinning Piano in the process. Then they hit the back of Piano dealing massive damage to the chassis, destroying the back wheel and ripping the power distribution board off of its mounting point. I immediately tapped out to save what was left of my electronics for future competitions.
Event Reflection
I was very happy with how SCAR went overall. There were a lot of very experienced and skilled builders competing and going 1-2 in that space is a victory.
I learned a lot from going to SCAR. Prior to the event, I had forgotten to boil my nylon chassis. This process speeds up the nylon’s water absorption, making it far less brittle. Had I done this, I think the chassis would have faired better. The chassis also broke mostly across smaller cross sections. The next iteration of Piano will have much thicker cross sections to improve impact resistance.
I only ended up fighting horizontal spinners during SCAR. But I did not have a chance to switch to my anti-horizontal configuration due to time constraints between finding out my next match up and the fight beginning. This will need to be changed in the future to make match ups easier.
Additionally, I learned I need to work much harder on driving strategy in addition to engineering my robots.
It was a great time to get to meet many of the experienced builders I have seen in competitions online. Combat Robotics is a very caring and close knit community and I am always amazed by how nice and helpful everyone is.