Dale's Homemade Robots

Robot Battles 2007

On Monday, Sept 3rd 2007, team €œDale€™s Homemade Robots€ (Dale, Ann, Tony and Keith) converged on the Atlanta Hyatt Regency Hotel with OmegaForce and Scary-Go-Round for a little robot combat action at Dragon*Con Robot Battles. Boy did we get some. There were seven 12 pounders and nine in the 30# class fighting in the Centennial One ballroom in front of a standing room only crowd. The emcee, Kelly, was dressed in a cowboy outfit this year. No one knows why.

This year the stage was littered with small yellow rubber ducks to provide amusement and a minor hazard. The ducks were an improvement over the snakes from last year, one of which got stuck in OmegaForce and cost me a victory. Carried over from the past two years were the 1/4 inch high steel speed bumps screwed to the stage to present a hazard to wedges. My auto-retracting smart wedges neutralized that threat and the newly installed snake guards(tm) took care of the duck problem.

The combat was setup for double elimination. Omegaforce was first up against Robot Chicken. His weapon was a beak-like spike driven by electric motor. Initial contact hurled Chicken several feet backwards. This kinda freaked out the driver who promptly drove off the stage. In round 2 OmegaForce tossed Chicken off the stage much to the delight of the violence thirsty spectators.

Next we had to fight Guiding Light, a bot said to have been made from a stolen church chandelier. The builders don€™t know if god is on their side or still mad about the theft. In any case, OmegaForce tossed it off the stage once and they drove off once. That€™s two down.

Next to face the OmegaForce rotary flipper was Nicole Richie, so named because the bot was supposed to be 12 pounds but when finished only weighted 7. This bot uses steel wire brushes for wheels which give it amazing traction on the carpeted stage surface. But you can€™t get traction while airborne and that€™s where Nichole R. spent most of the two rounds .

Nichole worked her way back up through the loser brackets in double elimination and came back to face OmegaForce again in the final. Second verse, same as the first. She got a lot of air time and was finally tossed off the stage right in front of the cheering crowd. I was then presented with a nice plaque, a blue ribbon and a yellow rubber duck. This was the first time my bot didn€™t come off the stage, not even once during the one on one competition.

The 12# Battle Royale was won by Dagger driven by Stephen Chapman. Omegaforce was ejected from the fray by Probulator early on. I really don€™t mind since winning the Battle Royale is mostly luck.

Now on to the bad news. 30# Scary-Go-Round. This bot was a big question mark from the beginning but failed to live up to even the most modest expectations. It lost 4 of 5 rounds. There was an intermittent electrical problem which caused one of the 3 wheels to stay in full braking mode most of the time. It rarely got up to full lethal spinning speed and was uncontrollable as well. I don€™t know if I€™ll continue development of that design or not. There is a video of it€™s sad little performance below.

All OmegaForce fights

One Scary-Go-Round fight

Highlights Video (the good stuff)

Some still Photos. There are lots more in my ShutterFly account.
Click here to see €˜em.