Build Your Own Combat Robot

FIGURE 10-10
Robot with a vertical
spinning disk/blade.
Chapter 10: Weapons Systems for Your Robot 225
it down against the floor, rather than flinging it sideways, as can happen with a
conventional spinner.
Figure 10-10 shows a vertical spinning robot.
While the weapon can be much more effective than a standard horizontal spinner,
the vertical spinner trades off improved offense with a greatly weakened defense.
While a standard spinner can be built to cover the robot’s body completely,
such that an opponent cannot help but be hit by the weapon on any contact, the
vertical spinner’s narrow disk must be carefully lined up on its target. The large
disk gives the vertical spinner a dangerously high center of gravity, requiring a
large, wide body to support it, which makes the vertical spinner vulnerable to attacks
from the sides or rear.
Spinning the disk will generate significant gyroscopic effects every time the robot
turns, requiring widely set drive wheels and a slow turn speed to keep the robot
from flipping itself over when turning. The vertical spinner also suffers the same
self-inflicted impacts as the standard spinners. While the impacts are downward
and the floor helps brace the robot in place, vertical spinners have been destroyed
by their own weapon impacts.
As with the spinner, the optimum form of the vertical spinner will be a disk with
the weight concentrated at the edges. Vertical spinners have the additional property
of hurling their opponents into the air on solid hits, doing additional damage
when the opposing robot crashes back into the floor.