Alternative Competition Styles

What got me thinking about this was the RioBotz tutorial where the author(s) describe a tournament they attended in Brazil where the standard arena walls were built onto a skating rink, with a floor of solid ice. This created some different challenges for the teams to design around, as well as being an interesting venue.
This topic could be treated sort of like the Idea Dump thread, but for potential new competition and arena styles that diverge from the typical Battlebots format.

An arena in a volcano. Or above. A challenge to make your robot withstand that much heat.

Sean Rubin wrote:

An arena in a volcano. Or above. A challenge to make your robot withstand that much heat.

Could hold it with the arena outdoors in the desert regions of California or in Phoenix, Arizona in the summer... the greenhouse effect from the arena would put temps inside WAY above 150F.

please tell me what ESCs could handle that hahha

Ones with gigantic, pre-cooled heat sinks, that's what.

A refrigerator bot.

And theres the reason Battlebots died hahahahaha

And heat sinks would only decipate the heat from the processor/board, it wouldnt help with the actual temperature at all

@ Cody: True, you still have your motors to worry about, but it's not impossible for electronics to be tuned to operate in temperature extremes. At least the wheels would have good grip, they'd be softened by the heat .

Actually, what if you took a small copper heat sink, drilled a hole of a certain size to depth, and tapped that hole a certain distance for a bolt with a rubber O-Ring around the base of its head. Then, make a small slug of ice that will fit in the non-tapped portion, and super-cool it before a match with an alcohol bath cooled by dry ice to some obscenely low temperature. Place ice slug into heat sink, seal, and turn on the robot - it should do a perfect job of keeping the ESCs at a happy temperature for well over the standard match length.

Dughi's refrigerator 'bot might also be an approach - insulating the robot and adding some kind of cooling system, at least to the section of the robot housing the ESCs.

Refrigerator bots cause the demise of battlebots basically! haha
What about dipping speed controlers in liguid nitrogen, do you think they would short?!

Mythbusters Pykrete Episode
So i was watching mythbusters last night and the myth they were testing made me think of this haha
They were testing this composite material called Pykrete.
Pykrete is a mix of sawdust/wood pulp and ice.
Mythbusters did several test to find the Pykrete is actually bullet proof while they ran out of weights after 300 hundred pounds when the similar ice slab was somewhere near 40 pounds i believe.
You could make a mold of your frame and make multiples for each match(thinking that you could self-tap into the material) and the frozen frame would cool you electronics!
hahahahahahahaha crazy stuff they built a freakin boat out of it! then it melted
Only video i could find right now

It is bullet proof...but not necessarily spinning bar proof or sharp edge proof. I know many bullet proof vests that you can just cut right through them with scissors...but bullets dont penetrate them.

Pykrete is highly crush resistant. The first time it was demonstrated to a group of generals, the inventor shot it with a pistol; the bullet then ricocheted off the small block and hit one of the assembled generals in the leg. Fortunately, that was enough to impress the assembled group (including the guy who got hit) and the inventor got much more funding toward pykrete research.

Sean Rubin wrote:

It is bullet proof...but not necessarily spinning bar proof or sharp edge proof. I know many bullet proof vests that you can just cut right through them with scissors...but bullets dont penetrate them.

It proved its strength and id have to think it would just turn into an ice machine against a drum

OOOOOO i completly forgot about this!
IDk if anyone else watched discovery channel last night but there was a new show calle pitchmen and they introduced ImpactGel
Looks pretty cool tho
Great way to mount stuff in your pykrete bot!

Cody Harris wrote:

OOOOOO i completly forgot about this!
IDk if anyone else watched discovery channel last night but there was a new show calle pitchmen and they introduced ImpactGel
Looks pretty cool tho
Great way to mount stuff in your pykrete bot!

I LOVE BILLY MAYS!! He can sell a piece of poo by calling it WowPoo!

Sean Rubin wrote:

Cody Harris wrote:

OOOOOO i completly forgot about this!
IDk if anyone else watched discovery channel last night but there was a new show calle pitchmen and they introduced ImpactGel
Looks pretty cool tho
Great way to mount stuff in your pykrete bot!

I LOVE BILLY MAYS!! He can sell a piece of poo by calling it WowPoo!

As long as you can wash it and sell it for only $19.99
BUT WAIT THERES MORE!!!!!

Note: i just held down both my shift buttons at the same time and i have no clue why, i guess that was just that enthusiastic lol

Ya BILLY MAYS is training a successor.

hahaha dude. there should be a DOUBLESHIFT function for really excited people. like it makes the font bigger or bold or something lol...

hahahaha that just made my day

I typed it, realized what i had just done, and sat pondering WTF i had just done