The Idea Dump

Brain-Computer Interface Controls

Despite the exotic name, commercial Brain-Computer Interfaces (hereafter called BCIs) already exist - and you don't even need to shove wires into your head to use them! One model made by OCZ called the Neural Impulse Activator, or NIA for short, is used in conjunction with a standard PC's interface devices (mouse & keyboard). That particular model can be set so certain electrical impulses it picks up are bound to any keystroke the user desires, and can [with practice] result in dramatic drops in reaction time. The number of commands you use the NIA for is also quite flexible, and can it can even just be used as the trigger in FPS games with all other controls kept standard. For more information on OCZ's NIA, go here:

http://hothardware.com/Articles/OCZ_NIA_BrainComputer_Interface/Default.aspx?page=1

or here:

http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/ocz_peripherals/nia-neural_impulse_actuator

I think these interfaces could potentially be of great use in 'bots. If anything else, the shorter reaction times alone would be reason enough to look into them. However, making a BCI device work with our current radio transmitters would take a great deal of time and effort in programming, troubleshooting, and modifications to a transmitter's wiring to allow it to be fed information by a computer hooked up to a BCI.

In any case, this is at least a very interesting idea that will probably become reality in a few years. In fact, several toys are already on the market that use simpler BCIs (mostly Star Wars branded).

Jeff L wrote:

Crossbow/Bow Based Spring Weapons

The crossbow is a still-used and moderately powerful projectile weapon. In the middle ages, they were often used against mounted knights, due to their impressive ability to penetrate the armor of the period.

This concept involves making modified bow-style weapons instead of using typical springs for things such as a spike weapon or possibly a simple flipper. Very high torque motors could easily handle repeatedly arming a spring-steel bow which could then drive an armor piercing spike into an opponent's robot.

No further work has been done on this idea.

I foresee at least 2 problems with this, both having to do with the fact that any "projectiles" must be tethered:
1. how would we pull the projectile back? (and what happens if it gets stuck in the other robot some how?)
2. how would we make sure that the "arrow" gets back into the right spot on the spring steel bow to be shot out well?

godughifu wrote:

Jeff L wrote:

Crossbow/Bow Based Spring Weapons

The crossbow is a still-used and moderately powerful projectile weapon. In the middle ages, they were often used against mounted knights, due to their impressive ability to penetrate the armor of the period.

This concept involves making modified bow-style weapons instead of using typical springs for things such as a spike weapon or possibly a simple flipper. Very high torque motors could easily handle repeatedly arming a spring-steel bow which could then drive an armor piercing spike into an opponent's robot.

No further work has been done on this idea.

I foresee at least 2 problems with this, both having to do with the fact that any "projectiles" must be tethered:
1. how would we pull the projectile back? (and what happens if it gets stuck in the other robot some how?)
2. how would we make sure that the "arrow" gets back into the right spot on the spring steel bow to be shot out well?

I said nothing about projectiles; just using a bow as a different configuration for spring-based drivers or spikes. It would be prevented from being a projectile by permanently mounting the spike to the 'string' of the bow, which in this case could be a thin steel cable.

Jeff L wrote:

Crossbow/Bow Based Spring Weapons

The crossbow is a still-used and moderately powerful projectile weapon.

That kinda says projectile, so assumed you meant a projectile, but yeah, that other idea could work.

Ah, k. Sorry about that.

Make a full body spinner where it's powered not by individual motors but by a single brushless motor which is custom made so that the entire bot is the motor and the spinning shell is the output shaft.

Julien Kuzniarek wrote:

Make a full body spinner where it's powered not by individual motors but by a single brushless motor which is custom made so that the entire bot is the motor and the spinning shell is the output shaft.

And then have miniature versions powering in-wheel motors . I'm certain it could be done, but I'm not sure if it would be light enough. You'd need magnets lining the interior of the drum and a pretty hefty steel arrangement of electromagnets that drive the shell. The only other thing I'd worry about is if the shell was deformed from an impact, that would take the magnets out of alignment and severely impact the motor's performance.

What I do know is this has already been done in similar fashion on a slightly smaller scale with a decent array of spinning weapons, where the disk is directly a part of a custom brushless motor.

Jeff L wrote:

Julien Kuzniarek wrote:

Make a full body spinner where it's powered not by individual motors but by a single brushless motor which is custom made so that the entire bot is the motor and the spinning shell is the output shaft.

And then have miniature versions powering in-wheel motors . I'm certain it could be done, but I'm not sure if it would be light enough. You'd need magnets lining the interior of the drum and a pretty hefty steel arrangement of electromagnets that drive the shell. The only other thing I'd worry about is if the shell was deformed from an impact, that would take the magnets out of alignment and severely impact the motor's performance.

What I do know is this has already been done in similar fashion on a slightly smaller scale with a decent array of spinning weapons, where the disk is directly a part of a custom brushless motor.

Team Cosmos Corona is probably one of the best examples ive seen. A big thing in antweights now is to press fit the drum to the can of an outrunner

Yeah, I've seen the robot you're talking about. One that I personally find pretty impressive is made by a guy at MIT, a TINY chopper blade antweight called Pop Quiz 2. He took what I believe were parts out of a HDD motor for the weapon and made what has got to be the thinnest robot I've ever seen. The thing is thinner than a quarter's (as in the coin) diameter.

PQ2 was an awesome bot design wise, but did the standard horizontal spinner self destruct. I believe he did the wepon motor like that on Nuclear kitten 5

I'm adding this here cuz this thread is more appropriate for it:

MultiBot Drum and Lifter Combo/Fuser

godughifu wrote:

You know what would be really awesome? A multi-but that can combine into one bot. You have a full body drum and a lifter type robot, the lifter can lift other, heavier robots, and make them easy targets for the full body drum, or it can lift up the drum and some how, basically stick a rod into the sides of the full body drum and then you have a full weight robot that has a drum for a weapon with a separate controller for the main body and for the weapon. Also, if we added Spiderpig's secret weapon to the lifter bot, that would make the whole thing so much more awesome and effective too.

Shredder Bot

As Dughi suggested earlier, making a robot based around an industrial shredder has never really been done before, despite the potential of such a machine used as a weapon. Here is my take on how one would go about making a feasible shredder robot.

Industrial shredders often have a set of blades that rotate inward toward each other (and can be reversed in the case of jamming). One part of this mechanism that would have to be changed for a robot is the number of blades, due to both weight and available power. One, Three, or Five blades (total) would be sufficient for the purposes of a battlebot. For a prototype, I myself would go for a single driven blade working against a highly reinforced section of chassis with built-in stationary blades. The blade's rotational direction does not matter, just as long as the target robot is pulled into the mechanism. To drive the blade, I would either go with a two-cylinder RC aircraft engine (good weight to power) or the biggest electric motor I could cram into the robot, geared down to a maximum RPM of about 60. The blade(s) would be made ideally of either solid grade 5 titanium, or a tool steel. Blade geometry would start with a sharp chisel-like edge and gradually increase in thickness as you moved away from the points. The robot itself would have to be designed to force the robots in toward the blades; one possible shape for the front would be a concave wedge with the shredder mounted in the dead center. Since a crusher is unlikely to be able to damage shell spinners, alternate "gripper" blades coated in rubber could be made to give the robot a powerful manipulator-like weapon instead of what would be an ineffective weapon in that battle.

Dughi was that someone that suggested that. It sounds like a very cool idea. But probably quite hard to design and build.

Actually, not hard to build - EXPENSIVE to build. You can't cut corners for this to work, and High-Torque applications are a whole different animal from High-Speed applications.

Really...i thought it would take an extensive amount of time to build it...
Mainly i think the difficulty would be designing it.

But, of course it would be expensive. But how expensive? not much more than a drum...right?

A lot more. You need to buy gears capable of handling constant stress put on them by the process of shredding metal into ribbons. This could not be handled by timing belts and aluminum pulleys. The main difference between high-speed drums & a high-torque shredder is the gearing; you've got to put a lot of work into making something that will hold up to very different kinds of stresses during operations.

You'd also want some sort of system to cool down the blades, just in case, cuz if something gets stuck, or if there's too much friction between the blades and there's no way of cooling them or anything, then its screwed.

and you would also need to find out how and where the shrapnel from the opponent's robot will go. If inside the robot...need an open space. If outside...how?

Eh, not really the blades so much as the motor & speed controller. The material the blades themselves are made out of can take a LOT of heat.

Sean Rubin wrote:

and you would also need to find out how and where the shrapnel from the opponent's robot will go. If inside the robot...need an open space. If outside...how?

You'd basically have to make the robot kind of like a carwash type thing

godughifu wrote:

Sean Rubin wrote:

and you would also need to find out how and where the shrapnel from the opponent's robot will go. If inside the robot...need an open space. If outside...how?

You'd basically have to make the robot kind of like a carwash type thing

Have the stationary blades just 'open' on the top and/or bottom (not open as in move, open as in they're just sort of sitting out there with no armored casing). The blades would be only capable of taking a certain sized chunk out at a time, which would likely ride along on the blade until it just fell out. You would want the robot capable of driving over the little chunks that would fall pretty much under your robot though, unless the blade spun upwards, which would mean the debris could be dealt with much easier.

Jeff L wrote:

godughifu wrote:

Sean Rubin wrote:

and you would also need to find out how and where the shrapnel from the opponent's robot will go. If inside the robot...need an open space. If outside...how?

You'd basically have to make the robot kind of like a carwash type thing

Have the stationary blades just 'open' on the top and/or bottom (not open as in move, open as in they're just sort of sitting out there with no armored casing). The blades would be only capable of taking a certain sized chunk out at a time, which would likely ride along on the blade until it just fell out. You would want the robot capable of driving over the little chunks that would fall pretty much under your robot though, unless the blade spun upwards, which would mean the debris could be dealt with much easier.

But then it would be a drum. Wouldn't shred easily. It needs to spin down.

Btw...3 more posts until you get to 300 dughi

Sean Rubin wrote:

Jeff L wrote:

godughifu wrote:

Sean Rubin wrote:

and you would also need to find out how and where the shrapnel from the opponent's robot will go. If inside the robot...need an open space. If outside...how?

You'd basically have to make the robot kind of like a carwash type thing

Have the stationary blades just 'open' on the top and/or bottom (not open as in move, open as in they're just sort of sitting out there with no armored casing). The blades would be only capable of taking a certain sized chunk out at a time, which would likely ride along on the blade until it just fell out. You would want the robot capable of driving over the little chunks that would fall pretty much under your robot though, unless the blade spun upwards, which would mean the debris could be dealt with much easier.

But then it would be a drum. Wouldn't shred easily. It needs to spin down.

No it needs to spin sideways.

godughifu wrote:

Sean Rubin wrote:

Jeff L wrote:

godughifu wrote:

Sean Rubin wrote:

and you would also need to find out how and where the shrapnel from the opponent's robot will go. If inside the robot...need an open space. If outside...how?

You'd basically have to make the robot kind of like a carwash type thing

Have the stationary blades just 'open' on the top and/or bottom (not open as in move, open as in they're just sort of sitting out there with no armored casing). The blades would be only capable of taking a certain sized chunk out at a time, which would likely ride along on the blade until it just fell out. You would want the robot capable of driving over the little chunks that would fall pretty much under your robot though, unless the blade spun upwards, which would mean the debris could be dealt with much easier.

But then it would be a drum. Wouldn't shred easily. It needs to spin down.

No it needs to spin sideways.

Too complicated. You would need 2 at the exact width of the opposing robot. That is pretty much impossible.