Build Your Own Combat Robot

18 Build Your Own Combat Robot
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 Wars and Robotica, 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 book doesn’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 different
contests. We want you to use your imagination! Do something different. 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 included
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!