UK Mechwarfare / Lynxmotion

[jwatte]

$2,000 that's not bad when you consider how much people spend on the combots.

I'm at 3x that by now. My wife's comment when she totalled up the bill: "You'd /better/ win!"
No pressure...

[jwatte]

it seems we only have the combots over here which I find a bit dull

If you have the available time, perhaps you could organize something yourself? Tie into some existing robot meet, and announce and market the event. Start out with just an open league, to let people start easily with hexes and tanks and whatnot. Aim for four or five contestants from across Europe, and spend *all* your time evangelizing to get competitors.

Take lots of video and photos when you actually hold the event, and use for marketing the next year. Repeat :-)
If you can get a club or some friends to "seed" the competition by committing a 'bot or two, you have a much better chance of getting bootstrapped, too.

Whether you could/should use the name "mech warfare" I have no idea -- probably a good idea to check out before you get serious about this, if you do.

[tician]

I've always been rather fond of the dirt cheap and easy target sensors used at a mechwarfare-type event several years ago in Japan. Basically, a little wire cube about 2" on a side covered in aluminium foil with a Cadmium Sulfide ambient light sensor in the bottom of it (probably less than $10 for everything). The more holes the airsoft pellets punch into the foil, the greater the incident light. Once it reaches some limit, then the bot is deemed dead. You could even connect the sensor and cheap microcontroller to a biggish MOSFET or SSR at the battery to kill the bot's power.

edit: upon further pondering, the big box of ~60mm square solar cells under my bed would probably be a better choice than an itty-bitty CdS photocell.

[Fatfrank69]

Thanks Jwatte, I was thinking this myself. I wouldn't be able to do it right now, clearly takes a lot of time and effort, but perhaps one day in the near future. I've already had a friend offer to help build an arena/scenery. I would try and make it more open to start with, allowing hex's and tanks, though tanks may have to be in a separate class. Heck, perhaps one day we can include quad coptors? Something like the AR.Parrot drone with a bb gun under it flying around the city scape.

Tician, yeah I've seen what the Japanese have done, very ingenious and I like the idea of the bots powering down once their hit points run out.

Do you guys get to see your hit points or do the organisers see them? You could overlay them using something like a Propeller backpack so you have a HUD on your screen. Possibly also have two giant screens at the arena showing this footage as well for the audience?

[rebel]

My next robot, keep in mind it is a Biped, has already gone over $4K. One thing I will tell you, going cheap does not work for these robots