Dale's Homemade Robots

T-Boner 2.0

Updated May 31 2018

Sept 3, 2016

T-Boner 1.0 has been upgraded with major modifications.

Weapon was moved back into the body to shorten overall length. It doesn't rotate to self-right.
New mechanism added to self-right using the flipper.
Servo added to allow driver to raise the filpper tip by 3/8 inch to get over stage hazzards.
Overall width increased by 4 inches to accomodate weapon.
1700KV motors replaced with smaller 1100 KV motors.
Sharp IR distance sensors added for automatic opponent tracking.

T-Bone 2.0

Notice the short mini flipper above the main flipper? That's the self-righting flipper. It fires when it hits the ground and flips the bot back upright.

The battery pack is stuffed into the white 3D printed box left of the weapon. It's five 18650 Li-Ion cells in series. 18 volts, 2500MaH . The clear round cover on the rear panel is over the charging port hole.

This is new flipper mechanism. The extra complexity is caused by the addition of a servo to lift the weapon tip over stage hazards and the self-triggering self-righting mini flipper on top. The dog clutch is now restricted to less than 180 degrees rotation.

View from below.

The controller has been redesigned using opto isolators to drive the ESCs. This change eliminated ground loop issues. It was built on a real PC board this time! No perfboard.

The new motor is 1100kv and pulls much less current than the original 1700kv motor. Full speed is around 7 fps which is a nice speed for staying on the stage at DragonCon Robot Battles.

Below the motor is one of the two Sharp distance sensors that help guide the bot to its target. The two sensors are spaced 13 inches apart. Operation is pretty simple. If neither sensor or both sensors see the target it does nothing. If the left sensor sees the target, steer left. If right sensor sees target, steer right. I'll find out if this works in the real world on Sept. 5 2016 at Robot Battles.

Here's a short slo-mo video of the bot self-righting.

Sept 5, 2016

Robot Battles 60 (or "Needs more loctite")

T-Boner 2.0 performed very well until the bolt holding the weapon pushrod to the dog clutch backed itself out a little and caused the weapon the self-activate repeatedly.

The first fight was against Shaboombox. T-Boner tossed him off the stage once and he drove off in the 2nd round. The bot was almost flawless except for wanting to do wheel stands under hard acceleration. I think I can fix that in software. The small self-righting flipper also worked well.

The next fight was with Lift Lord. This one didn't go so well. In fact we lost due the the above mentioned bolt issue. The flipper self-activated when it got stuck under steel stage edging. Since the flipper tip couldn't go up the bots body went up instead. About 4 feet up actually. Awesome air time. Too bad is was my own bot. After landing it self righted, flipped Lift Lord once more before flipping itself off the stage. Round 2 was a disaster. The flipper had to be shut off because it was triggering continuously and T-Boner is a terrible pushy bot. Single elimination meant I was out.

The opponent tracker was completely useless because Charles brought a bag full of 2 inch diameter 3D printed plastic set screw replicas as stage hazards and presented them to Kelly. Apparently it was to commemorate his loss at BattleBots due to a stray set screw that came up off the floor and jammed his chain drive. Kelly dumped them all on the stage. They were like chaff to radar. Targets everywhere! I may need to raise my sensors up a little.

I figured out why the bolt came loose. It was improper use of a lock washer. Where is was placed did absolutely nothing to hold the bolt. Totally my mistake. I've made some modifications so it can't come loose again.

Robot Battles 64 at DragonCon 2017

T-Boner did well this year defeating Liftlord, Florida Pool Noodle Massacre, Curtis and Hypnus. In fact we made it all the way to the final against Tuskin' Raider before we lost. At least partly to blame was the loss of flipper power during the final few seconds of the match. The gear on the flywheel came loose effectively disconnecting it from the flipper. That issue has been fixed so it will not happen again.

The auto-pilot opponent tracker worked great this year and there weren't any stage obstacles to confuse it. However, there was Camera-Bot which got near the opponent and caused T-Boner to drive right into it and flip it off the stage. Poor Camera-Bot. But, it did survive.

Also fixed this year was the accidental wheelies problem. I limited the acceleration in software to keep the front end down.