Competition: Utah Fall Brawl 2023
Overview
In October, Utah Combat Robotics hosted Utah Fall Brawl. It followed a standard double elimination bracket.
Overall the Utah Fall Brawl went really well. My main 3 goals for this event were:
Make Piano more durable
Make goober somewhat drivable
Make Goober hit harder
Summary
I certainly met my goals.
Piano is definitely more durable, it took a bunch of big hits from Crescendo and a couple more big hits later on. The chassis had a few cracks, but was overall reusable. The servo mount cracked off, which I was expecting. But some hot glue held it well enough for the rest of the event. In the fight with Crescendo, one of the drive motors died.
The pinion was pushed into the motor housing and broke the back of the motor off. There was one loss due to a silly geometry mistake I made in cad where the cad arm position and real arm position are not quite the same.
Piano was super easy to work on this time around. I was worried that passing the electronics under the arm would make it hard to work on. But taking the bolt out of the top back pivot of the arm allows it to be easily moved out of the way.
Goober was fairly difficult to drive in my first match. But afterwards, I ground down the end of the motor shaft into a round. The reduced contact area made a huge difference in the drivability of Goober.
In my fight with Inversion, Goober showed it could actually hit hard and do some damage. I did end up cutting my own weapon motor wires due to forgetting a zip tie. However, I was able to use test a new driving style in this fight. Using a momentary switch on my Zorro Transmitter, I was able to switch between my weapon being forward and my wedge being forward. It was weird to get used to but worked well. It worked even better in the fight against Chernobly, as the weapon fell off early in the fight. The press fit on the motor hub got looser after removing and swapping to new weapons multiple times.
Piano Fights
Piano vs Crescendo - loss
My first fight was against Caleb Hecht and Crescendo. Caleb and I are both part of Combat Ready Robotics at ASU, so of course we both traveled all the way to Utah to fight each other first.
I had been working on Piano since May Metal Massacre. I made the arm shorter and made it lift less to avoid dropping my opponents. I also wanted to make Piano far more durable. I made all of the chassis cross sections far thicker. I also made the armor much stronger. The front wedges were switched from titanium to 4130 and I added an AR500 plate to the back.
Piano went into this fight with a wonky drive. There chassis had warped causing the wheels to not always touch the ground. Still, I was able to crab walk to the center of the box. However, another problem reared its head. The UCR arena had wood floors. Piano is designed for steel floors and as such, has very sharp forks. Sharp enough that they dig into the floor in the arena. This would become an on going problem for the rest of the day.
With first contact Piano went flying, but did not break. The armor improvements were working. With this design I am back to building bullet proof bricks. Later in the day, robots hit by Crescendo in the same way were heavily damaged, if not completely destroyed.
Piano vs Funk Soul Brother - win
This fight was a fight of miraculous luck. It was against Funk Soul Brother, a big beater bar vertical. Piano was still crab walking and digging into the ground. But on the first set of exchanges, Piano’s wedges absorbed all the hits and Funk Soul Brother’s weapon belt came off. Piano’s tried to get stuck under the kick plate, but the arm was able to free me. I then got behind Funk Soul Brother and backed into it, knocking it forward onto its weapon. Without a weapon and with its wheels no longer touching the ground, Funk Soul Brother was stuck doing “the thing.” It was counted out and Piano secured a win for the day.
Piano vs Frito - loss
Before this fight, I realized I should remove my static forks were causing me a lot of drive problems. The tips of the forks kept digging into the already damaged wooden floor. To avoid this, I took the static forks off. The forks are intended to protect the main forks on Piano’s arm, but since Frito is another control bot, the forks were not missed. I also wrapped the end of the forks on the arm in electrical tape to prevent them from digging into the floor.
The fight started slowly, with both drivers struggling to engage. The drive difficulties Piano encountered made it difficult for me to move quickly across the box. Eventually, Piano’s arm forks dug into the ground despite my efforts to prevent this. To dislodge myself, I raised the arm. However, while I was unable to move, Frito seized the chance to flip Piano over.
I had specifically redesigned the arm to have a lower profile to allow Piano to be investable. However, when it came time to test the change, Piano got stuck upside down. The driver of Frito tried their best to flip Piano back over, but Piano was too stable. Piano flopped around upside-down until it was finally counted out and eliminated from the bracket.
Goober Fight
Goober v Get to the Choppa - loss
I started this event with goober coming straight from Syn-Ack attack. The only change was a new shorter weapon motor that gave Goober a better angle of attack.
This fight started with goober very difficult to drive. The shaft of the weapon motor had a large contact area with the floor, which when spun up made goober spin and pull towards the direction of spin. This made it very hard to land hits on Get to the Choppa.
The fight was looking good when I got a hit that knocked Get to the Choppa’s weapon off. It was looking good until one of Goobers wheels came off. These wheels had been through the entire ARC bracket and Syn-Ack attack without needing to be replaced so their time was at hand.
I was still fairly mobile with the pull of the weapon motor and the one wheel. But suddenly the weapon motor gave out. Then Goober got pushed into a corner and high centered on arena debris.
After the fight, I was not able to identify what had gone wrong with the motor, so I just replaced it with a fresh motor.
Goober vs inversion - win
There was a large gap between this fight and the previous, so I was very amped to be fighting again. My opponent was Inversion, a wedge bot. My plan was to try to take off the wedge as quick as possible then control the pace of the fight from there.
I was able to act on my plan quickly. Once the wedge was off I was able to start dominate the fight pretty well.
Between fights, I had ground the weapon axle into a ball point. This reduced the contact area making Goober far more controllable. However, when I was replacing my weapon motor, I forgot to zip tie the weapon wires. Without the zip tie, my weapon wires fell into the path of the weapon and one of the phases was cut.
I used a new strategy once my weapon broke. My transmitter has a button to invert drive directions when I get flipped over. When used while upright however, it makes the “forward” direction the wedge side rather than the weapon side. The long flat wedge allows me to pin my opponents easier than the pivoting disabled weapon. Using the switch I can easy swap between the “weapon forward” strategy and “wedge forward” strategy. This strategy switching gave me far better control over the fight than previous iterations.
Goober ended the fight high sided but this happened late enough that I was not counted out. My improved control and damage output gave me the win in a Judges decision.
Goober vs Cheranobly - loss
Prior to this fight I had done some tuning to the turning rate on Goober. This made Goober more controllable and less likely to over turn. I had also swapped the old weapon out to a fresher one.
This fight was against Cheranobly, a drum spinner. My plan going into this fight was to hit Cheranobly’s drum uprights to disable its weapon then continue to deliver big hits.
However, Cheranobly got a good box rush that knocked my weapon off. Swapping the weapon multiple times had weakened the press fit. Without the weight of the weapon, my turn rate tuning did not matter. I overturned ever time I attempted to make any course adjustments.
Despite this, I feel I drove very well this fight. I pivoted to focusing on control points while also trying to get Cheranobly to knock itself into the pit. I continued to employ the strategy switching I had been working on in my previous fights and I was able to get a number of pins. Goober dealt well with the bit hits output by Cheranobly and the fight went the full 3 minutes.
In the end, it was not quite enough and the Cheranobly won by Judges Decision