We are planning an Antweight event at the Hackspace in Nottingham on Saturday 28th of October. This will be a full combat tournament with a few side contests, and we will also be trialling a Sandbotz contest with the arena full of sand.
Details TBD shortly, but we will have a weight limit of 300g and no other unusual restrictions for the Sandbotz class (bespoke designs welcome, but you can use two Ants as a cluster if they can cope with the terrain).
Thanks Joe! I’ve got a couple of daft ideas for the sand robots so if nothing else there’ll be enough for one fight…
I am currently flat out trying to get ready for SubShow (and I suspect Steve is in the same boat) but we should be able to get some details of rules and costs out in a few days.
As well as the obvious change to the arena for the Sandbotz competition, we are also experimenting with the “victory conditions” for fights a bit. Rather than referees/judges having to make a subjective assessment of movement (outside a circle? controlled? just twitching) the winner has to occupy the opponent’s starting square.
Hopefully this will simplify things a little and add a slightly different feel to the end of the fight, even if the outcome is functionally very similar. I’d be interested to hear what folk think of this change though!
I’m planning on using the 300g SandBotz weight limit (plus assumed walker bonus) as an excuse to build something silly, though I might settle for also building something more practical (and which I’d be willing to put in the arena with any more violent opponents).
Introducing Ghost Crab, at least the slightly wobbly mechanical bits of it. It currently weighs in at 385g and I suspect about half of that is the 100+ screws it ate and the seemingly unlimited mass of servo cable it contains.
Hey Joe! We didn’t get around to the Sandbotz in the end. Only Steve and I were building for it and I was prioritising getting the arena built. Might cobble something together this weekend though (we’re going to have a watch party in the Hackspace for the BBB champs while also working on our robots for maximum robotitude).
The antweights went pretty well, not loads of people but it was pretty chilled out and we had a few people drop in to watch the fights. I think Steve and Simon are pulling the footage together from the livestream, I’m sure that will be posted up here in due course!
I need to build a more conventional SandBotz entrant still (my current one is Ghost Crab, the walker you can see scuttling around and incredibly annoying as a goalkeeper in the video) then we can hopefully give it a test run.
