Build Your Own Combat Robot

Chapter 1: Welcome to Competition Robots 5
NFL linebacker, and a wheelchair-bound person can run circles around an Olympic
gold medalist. Robot combat has leveled the playing field so that anyone can
compete against anyone on equal ground.
What Is a Robot?
Now that you’ve made up your mind to build a robot, you’re probably sitting
back wondering just what you’ve gotten yourself into.
“What is a robot?” you ask yourself.
Surprisingly, there are many definitions, depending on whom you ask. The Robot
Institute of America, an industrial robotics group, gives the following definition:
“A robot is a reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator designed to
move material, parts, tools, or specialized devices through variable programmed
motions for the performance of a variety of tasks.” These people, of course, are
thinking only of robots that perform manufacturing tasks.
Now that you’re thoroughly confused, Webster’s New World Dictionary defines
robot as “any anthropomorphic mechanical being built to do routine manual
work for human beings, or any mechanical device operated automatically,
especially by remote control, to perform in a seemingly human way.”
Hmmm. Now we seem to be talking about human-formed robots, like in the
movies, or it could be the description of a washing machine, or maybe the Space
Shuttle’s “robot arm.”
Where did the term “robot” come from? Back in the 1920s, a Czech playwright
by the name of Karel Capek wrote a short play entitled R.U.R., which stands for
Rossum’s Universal Robots. The word robot came from the Czech word robota,
which means indentured servant or slave. In Capek’s play, the robots turned on
their masters, which became a theme in many movies and stories in later
years—robots doing bad things to people. Only in more recent movies have robots
become friends of humans and started doing bad things to other robots.
To this day, those in the field of robotics still argue about what exactly constitutes
a robot. Many people think that if a machine doesn’t have some sort of intelligence
(that is, a microcontroller inside), it isn’t a robot. Some might look down
their noses and claim that only a multiarmed machine driven by a Pentium 4 processor
with 512 megs of RAM and fed by 100 sensors is really a robot. Those at
NASA might feel the same way about the Space Station’s Canada Arm. All this arguing
really doesn’t matter, because everyone has their own definition of what a
robot is—and everybody is right.
Whatever you choose to call a robot is a robot.
C ombat Robot Competitions
Before we start talking about types of robot competitions, let’s cover a brief history
of the events that gave rise to this sport. Organized robot competitions have been