Competition: Syn-Ack-Attack July 2023
Syn-Ack-Attack was hosted by Syn Shop Makerspace in their facilities.
The event was run using the Ante Up system. Vegas Combat Robotics has a great explanation here, but I will give a simplified description:
In the Ante Up system, rather than using a bracket to determine the fight order, each team is assigned 3 tokens per robot. To start a fight, each team will “bet” at least one chip and the winner of the fight takes all bet chips. At the end of the competition, the robot with the most chips, wins.
Fights:
Goober V Shuffle Go Burr
My first fight of the day was against my friend Aly with her robot, Shuffle Go Brr.
This fight was the first time I actually got to spin up Goober’s weapon and drive around in an area larger than my test box. As such, I started out having a lot of trouble controlling Goober’s drive. Goober got a few good hits in early in the fight by spinning around in a large arc. About halfway through the fight, I missed a hit on shuffle go brr and hit the wall. This caused an issue with the weapon spinning up. It was still receiving power, as evident by a screaming whine coming from the motor every time I tried to spin back up, but something was preventing the motor spin up.
From there on, the fight was a pushing match. Luckily, Goober’s wheels had a bit more grip than the shufflers on SGB. I tried to pin SGB as much as possible, but when pinning with the front end of Goober, the weapon would swivel out of the way, allow SGB to escape.
The fight ended in a judge’s decisions for Goober, leaving Goober up with 4 tokens.
Billet Bob V Axolotl Questions
Axolotl Questions is built by another of my friends, Brandon from Treacherous Robotics. At ARC, Goober and Axolotl Questions only fought in the grudge match with both Billet Bobs also in the arena. During that fight Goober was not able to do much, and eventually lost its weapon when the motor came loose and broke off.
I was certain this fight would be difficult. Axolotl Questions is fast, hits hard, and is driven very well by Brandon. Additionally, with the upward angle that the weapon had, Goober would always lose the weapon on weapon hits.
However, a lot of this did not matter, as after one of the first hits, Goobers weapon stopped. From there, the fight was tough. I tried to engage the weapon of AQ with the wedge on the back of Goober. This worked generally well and kept AQ from getting huge its. But on a couple hits, Goober would get flipped over. The current version of Goober struggles to turn while upside down, so Brandon could line up good shots on Goober. In the last 10 seconds of the fight, Goober’s weapon started to spin up again.
This fight ended in a well earned judge’s decision for Axolotl Questions.
Billet Bob v Trash Talker
Trash Talker is a big horizontal spinner and another of Brandon’s robots. For this match, I chose to use the Billet Bob configuration with the big wedge.
At the start of the fight, I tried to box rush Trash Talker to stop his spin up and was successful for a moment. But once he got some distance, he was able to spin up. I reengaged and managed to get under his forks and push him to the opposite side of the arena. Unfortunately, as Trash Talker dropped back to the ground, the weapon swiped against the tabs on Billet Bob’s lid and bent them into the right drive side, jamming it.
Billet Bob was still able to drive, but substantially impaired. I still did my best to be aggressive and try to break the weapon of Trash Talker on the wedge of Bob. On one unlucky hit, Trash Talker inverted himself, and was unable to flip back onto its wheels, giving Billet Bob the win.
The first ten seconds of this fight were the peak of what I want Billet Bob to do. I was able to engage fast, and stay on top of Trash Talker while the wedge soaked up any hits he was able to get off. For the following fights, I cut the tabs off of both lids to prevent this happening again.
Unbeknownst to me, the right drive side jamming had caused the ESC to blow out on that side. Due to other fights, I did not discover this until the next anti-horizontal configuration fight.
Billet Bob v Lemon Pound Cake
My next fight was against Toby from Borgerbots and Lemon Pound Cake, an alternate version of Smushed Bread. This fight was yet another rematch from ARC.
I selected the anti-vertical configuration of Billet Bob in the hopes that the forks would help me deal with LPC’s forks. I had setup my new transmitter for this version of Bob. The new transmitter allows me to use a switch to invert the controls when Billet Bob is flipped over.
This fight generally went better than the first time Bob had fought Smushed Bread. However, as the fight began, I realized that my left and right were mixed up on my new transmitter. This made this fight very difficult. Despite this, I felt I did a good job keeping squared up with Smushed Bread. With the anti-vertical configuration, the forks kept Bob from getting entirely scooped off the ground. Due to his superior driving and control, this fight went to Lemon Pound Cake.
I feel there is room for improvement in Billet Bob’s ability to deal with control bots.
Billet Bob v Big Vertical Spinner
My next fight was against a new team with their bot Big Vertical Spinner. This fight started well. I wasn’t able to get a box rush that stopped the big vertical spinner on Big Vertical Spinner, but I was able to capitalize on a driving error. The spinner of BVS was not able to spin back up after the first hit.
Throughout the whole fight, I was able to keep good control, pushing BVS into the walls, and keep my forks engaged with theirs. However, BVS large wheels were able to drive up on top of Billet Bob, allowing them to escape a decent number of my pins.
This fight resulted in a judge’s decision for Billet Bob.
Goober V Cognito Hazard
My next fight was against Toby again with his robot, Cognito Hazard. I fought against Cognito Hazard in my first ever competition with The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog.
However, early in the fight, the weapon on Goober flew off. While trying to determine what was wrong with Goober’s weapon after the fight against AQ, I removed the C clip and checked inside the motor. However, when I reassembled the motor, I had forgotten to put the C clip back.
From there, Cognito Hazard dominated the match and was awarded the win.
Billet Bob v Teenie Weenie Death Machinie
I was fairly nervous about fighting an overhead saw. Billet Bob’s top plate is only 0.062” and there are air vents right near the battery. However, I remembered that the bottom of Billet Bob is ~0.120” and solid. To try to avoid a battery fire, I inverted Billet Bob’s anti-vertical configuration. I swapped the two side forks, so the bottom faced up.
I was able to mostly avoid Teenie Weenie Death Machinie’s weapon during the beginning of the fight. The two bot’s geometry were such that when Billet Bob was able to get under TWDM, the saw could not touch Bob. There were a couple of nasty saw slices in the side and forks of Billet Bob.
Midway through the fight, I was able to pin TWDM against the wall, but when I tried to disengage, the two bots were stuck, and had to wiggle apart.
The scariest part of this fight came towards the end. Both bots engaged, with Billet Bob’s forks sliding up the wedge of TWDM. This allowed them to flip Bob back over. They then had a decent pin, which posed a huge risk to Billet Bob. I got lucky and the geometry problems protected Billet Bob’s top plate, giving me a chance to pin TWDM for the remaining 10 seconds of the fight.
Because of the control I was able to exhibit, Billet Bob was afforded the win in a judge’s decision.
Billet Bob v Pit Viper
Next up was a fight against Corbin and Pit Viper. Corbin is one of the organizers of Utah Combat Robotics.
Billet Bob vs Pit Viper was a safe matchup as the horizontal spinner of a viper kit is too high to hit Billet Bob. However, the previous fight with Trash Talker had done damage to the drive ESC that I did not detect until after this fight.
With the damaged drive on Billet Bob and the height incompatibility, the fight was uneventful. The two robots had even pushing power for the most part. Pit Viper was able to clip one of the screws on Billet Bob’s lid. The loss of the screw, in addition to being unable to control Pit Viper left this fight as a win for Pit Viper.
Goober V Slash and Burn
Goober vs Slash and Burn was one of the shortest fights of the day. Right as the fight began, Goober’s issues with intermittent power to the receiver started to rear their head.
As I went to spin up and cross the arena, Goober suddenly fell quiet and stopped. It was counted out, and the fight was over.
Billet Bob v Anubis
In its fight against Anubis, I got to test out the controls inverting switch a lot. Billet Bobs side forks did a good job at keeping Anubis away, but when it was able to land a kit, it bent all the center forks so badly they were useless.
Throughout this fight, Bob’s drive was sluggish. I suspect it may be due to some friction in the wheel wells. Despite the drive troubles, I felt I drove this match very well. I was able to keep squared up with Anubis and I got around the side of Anubis a couple times.
This match was award to Anubis for the dominant performance.
Goober v Axolotl Questions 2
Towards the end of the day, fights started to slow down some. Brandon and I decided to have a rematch between Goober and Axolotl Questions. This round went a lot better than the first time. Goober’s weapon stayed functional the whole time and I was able to stay engaged. However, due to the angle of Goobers weapon, I lost all of the weapon on weapon contacts, resulting in Goober getting thrown around.
In the middle of the fight, I attempted to close in for a hit on AQ, but missed and hit the wall. While flying back from the hit, one wheel slung off in a different direction. It had been knocked loose from the day’s fights despite the Loctite in the threads. But the vibrations of the weapon still afforded me some decent maneuverability.
This was a very fun fight that went to AQ in a judge’s decision.
Billet Bob V Ant Hide
In my fight against Ant Hide, I once again got a lot of use of my control inverting switch. Once I got used to using it, I did pretty well in the fight of keeping squared up, with only a few shots coming into the sides of Billet Bob.
Forty seconds into the fight, I was able to square up right as Ant Hide came in for a big hit. But unlike the other hits we had exchanged, Billet Bob was yanked up and on top of Ant Hide. One of the forks was bent in between the teeth of Ant Hide’s beater bar. We tried to separate, but when we were unable to, the match was paused. Even once the bots were made safe, we still could not pull the bots apart, resulting in the match going to a judge’s decision.
Having given a great performance in the fight, Ant Hide was awarded the win.
Concluding Remarks
Overall, I think I met my goals for the event. I was doing much better with driving strategically. None of my robots broke catastrophically and I did not get KO’d nor did I need to tap out at all. Goober almost made it the whole day without losing a wheel!
Moving forward, I am going to make some improvements to anti-vertical bob’s forks and look into adding magnets to its wedgelets. Other than that, Billet Bob will likely remain unchanged for the next event.
For Goober, I am going to find a shorter motor for the weapon. The current motor angled the chassis too much; in weapon on weapon hits verts hit Goober before the Goober could hit them. I tried out the height with the motor I got from the folks who brought Teeny Weenie Death Machinie and it looks very promising. I also have sorted out the issue with the intermittent receiver power by swapping some connectors around.
Thanks:
Thank you to Syn Shop for hosting and for allowing me to use the facilities resources when I needed to
Thank you to Pong for hosting an amazing and entertaining stream
Thank you to my fellow competitors for being so friendly and welcoming
Thank you to Aly for the Shuffle Go Brr shirt
Thank you to Brandon for letting me borrow some tools I had forgotten
Thank you to the whole Teenie Weenie Death Machinie team for lending me a C clip after mine flew off the table and for letting me have a motor
Thank you to my Mother for photography