Building a bot is not that difficult—if you’ve done your homework on the basic el-ements involved. It may take you a while to figure out how to do new things, and it might take a long time before you build your dream machine, but consider your first project a learning process—patience and persistence are key when you’re building a bot.
Robotics is one of those fields where you need to be able to wear a lot of differ-ent hats. That means you must know a little bit about a lot of things, including mo-tors, electronics, wiring, computers, radio transmitters and receivers, batteries, gears, belts, bearings, chains, sprockets, metals, plastics, drilling, cutting, thread-ing, bendthread-ing, and welding—just to name a few.
You don’t have to be an expert in all of these categories—you just need to un-derstand the basics behind each one. Most combat robots are built by a team of people. Each team member is knowledgeable about certain areas of robot build-ing. When you get a group of people together who all know different pieces of the process, it reduces the burden on each individual for having to be an expert on ev-erything. After you have built a couple of bots and competed in a few contests, you’ll become something of an expert in all of the different categories because you will have been involved to some degree with every part of building the bot.
Probably the number-one question that gets asked of a bot warrior is, “How do I build a robot?” Well, nobody can give you a quick answer. It usually takes months to years to learn how to build a bot. There is just too much stuff you need to know. Most of the time, people learn just by doing it. We all make mistakes, and we learn from them.
The scope of this book is to help you, the new robot builder, get started in the exciting field of constructing combat robots. After reading this book, you will have an understanding of all the elements that go into building a bot. Usually, the new robot builder is surprised to find out that there are so many different things that go into this process. This is because most people only see the finished prod-uct—the beautiful, gleamingEl DiabloorNightmareorDeadblow—they don’t see the blood, sweat, and tears that went into building it.
The hardest part for us was just getting there. We had no sponsors and had to pay our own way for everything. It was tough, and it took months to pay off that credit card, but I would do it all again in
the blink of an eye! We met some of the most incredible (and nicest) people. The designs we saw and the creativity of the engineers and imagineers behind their bots inspired us. The generosity in the sharing of ideas, tools, and even
parts amazed us. We became part of this amazing community of robot builders and battlers and the camaraderie warmed us. It was one of the best weeks of my life.
—Ronni Katz
First Person continued
In this book, you’re going to learn how to lay out your ideas and come up with a good plan before starting to build your bot. You’ll learn the basics behind a lot of technical subjects, some of which are listed here:
■ How electric motors work, how to pick the right motor, and how to use it
■ The various locomotion methods and the various methods to get your motors to drive your bot’s wheels
■ Different types of batteries and how to size them for the right job
■ What’s required to actually drive a motor, and how to choose the right radio control system
■ How to minimize radio interference so your bot will do what you want, when you want
■ Wiring issues to keep in mind when building a bot
■ Materials and how to assemble them into your bot’s body
■ Armor for your bot
■ Weapons for your bot
■ Sensors you can build into your bot for use of automatic weapons, or to create a fully autonomous bot
■ How microcontrollers can help you control your bot and allow it to run on its own
In this book, you’ll learn about two different bots that were actually built for Robot WarsandRobotica,and you’ll even learn how to build a working mini sumo bot. As you read the stories behind the building of each of these bots, you will learn what the builders did to construct them and why they chose their own particular approaches, what worked, and what didn’t.
What this bookdoesn’t cover is the explicit step-by-step details of building combat robots. The main reason we chose not to do this is that we don’t want to prescribe an exact kind of bot for you to build. There are so many different types of bots to choose from, and an infinite variety of designs you could adopt, and the last thing we want is to see hundreds of the same identical bot competing in differ-ent contests. We want you to use your imagination! Do something differdiffer-ent. Have fun. Be creative. Make a six-legged mama robot that deploys a half-dozen baby robots. That would sure be fun to watch!
For those of you who would like more explicit details anyway, we have in-cluded a set of appendixes with references to other outstanding books and sources for information and robot parts. These lists should give you all the information you ever wanted about robot books and resources.
Okay, now let’s get started!