Robot Report - NHRL July 22, 2024
Robot Report - NHRL July 22, 2024
Codename Pinto broke a streak of bad luck and came out with a 3-2 record at our latest combat robotics outing
Some (hopefully) honest highlights from our fights at NHRL's June event. A compilation of the full fights is at the bottom of this post.
Note: I haven’t been ignoring the substack. I’ve just been working on a project I can’t quite share yet. Secondly, this post is long, but given that it’s my first post on my substack about robots, I felt the backstory was warranted. Thanks for reading, but I certainly won’t hold it against you if you don’t make it to the end. - Ben
Yesterday, Razi and I got up early, got some Dunkin’, and trekked a whopping 50 minutes to Norwalk to compete at National Havok Robot League (NHRL). I say ‘whopping’ because it’s comical how little we travel to get to NHRL compared to other competitors. It would be safe to bet that competitors travel an average of 3-5 hours to compete at, what feels like, our backyard. Yesterday there were multiple competitors from the UK and at other NHRL events, we’ve seen people travel from Australia, China, and Brazil.
I often tell friends that our hometown league is the largest combat robotics league in the world and I don’t even feel like that’s a “My dad is the strongest dad in the world” statement.
While we’ve been competing for less than a year, robot fights
have become a sizeable portion of our spare time and thoughts. We started with a kit bot from Just ‘Cuz Robotics (highly recommend) named “Bean Supreme”, and in January we debuted our first original design “Codename Pinto”. I won’t get into all the work that goes into creating a combat robot from scratch, but it’s easily the hardest thing I’ve ever created. We like to say it was “Designed by a ten-year-old and engineered by a music major”. The ten-year-old came up with the ideas and I had to figure out how to make them work.
In three previous competitions, we’ve experienced moments of success with Pinto and have an official record of 3-6 between two NHRL competitions and one event at a smaller league in New Jersey.
(We did an “off the books” freestyle tournament at NHRL consisting of 16 bots that had been knocked out of the official tournament in March. Razi did take the winning spot in the freestyle tournament bringing our unofficial record to 6-6, but we shall never speak of those unofficial numbers again.)
A driving factor in the design of Codename Pinto was the weapon—a three-disk vertical spinner going… really fast… that was supposed to put a fairly absurd amount of energy into an opponent and break them. The mind of a ten-year-old generally believes that one more is one better, and to be honest, so did I. While we were able to get the “trisk” (three disks) to work well, it proved to be too heavy. In a sport with strict weight limits, too heavy is a big problem. Since then, we’ve been experimenting with different weapon configurations and having weapon belt issues the whole time. Pinto has a separate motor to power the weapon and a belt that connects the two. If the belt breaks you’re basically done. Not only does the weapon smash the face of the opposing bot, but it’s also integral to righting the bot if it winds up the wrong side down.
At NHRL in March, all of our losses were due to losing the weapon. That day it was primarily the speed controller overheating. In New Jersey, our only two fights ended when both of our weapon belts broke in each match. A few tweaks to a 3D printed part and ordering an oversized weapon belt originally designed for a weed whacker and we thought our issues were behind us.
We were wrong.
Qualifying Fight 1 - Purple Pain
Loss by tapout
Purple Pain is a bot from a very experienced team driven by a very experienced kid. Kid Driver vs. Kid Driver; I would almost always put my money on Razi, but Cameron, the driver of Purple Pain, doesn’t mess around. Great bot, a great driver.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get much of a chance to see the kids go toe-to-toe. Our weapon belt broke immediately. My genius idea of a weed whacker belt was in fact DUMB. After the match, I didn’t have my wits about me enough to grab the broken belt and confirm my suspicion, but I’m pretty sure weed whacker belts aren’t designed for this kind of aggressive use and aren’t fiberglass reinforced like the belts we normally use.
Bigger≠Better.
We could have continued the fight, and Razi HATES tapping out but we didn’t have enough parts to be stubborn and proud. I told Razi we needed to tap out, Razi hesitantly hit the button, and later after discussion, he agreed with the call. I was proud of how he handled the situation.
Qualifying Fight 2 - Percussive Maintenance
Win by knockout
All the way from Great Britain, I’m absolutely smitten with Percussive Maintenance. Percussive Maintenance is the first 3-lb. hammer-bot that I’ve seen that is frightening. The hammer HITS and if given the chance could likely do some major damage. Before the match Razi and I decided to shed some weight, putting on TPU-rubber forks and adding a layer of TPU on top of our normal carbon-fiber top plates. Lastly, we installed a plate made out of AR500 steel in place of another carbon fiber plate that protects our juicy bits—the battery and other electronics. This was key as one hit from Percussive Maintenance’s hammer could have easily taken out the battery or drive circuit.
Early in the fight Razi got the upper hand and started to dismantle the armor of Percussive Maintenance. Even so, that hammer came down on our weapon motor and obliterated it leaving us once again weaponless. At this point in the match though Percussive Maintenance was disabled enough that Razi was able to go into control-bot mode; controlling the match and eventually flipping Percussive Maintenance. He was never able to recover.
This match could have easily gone the other way. I truly admire Percussive Maintenance and the builder behind it.
Qualifying Fight 3 - Tempest
Win by tapout
Tempest was driven by another local middle schooler. Given that the average age of competitors at NHRL is well above drinking age, it’s fun to compete against other people of Razi’s age. The high school team that Tempest competes with seems to have bot-building down to an art form. They build bots that are cleverly designed as tough as nails.
This was Tempest’s first tournament and they came to compete! Right off the bat they were all over Codename Pinto and got a great pin on us. For a minute I was worried we’d wind up unable to stay off the wall.
Eventually, Razi got composure of the bot and his experience kicked in. (Even though we’re new to this, we compete enough for the announcers to call Razi an “NHRL veteran”.) Razi got on Tempest and didn’t let up. I can’t be certain, but I think self-preservation took over and Tempest almost tapped out earlier in this match, so I knew if Razi stayed on Tempest they’d tap out. They did.
I think Tempest is one to keep an eye on next time around. Another local who is already a great driver means Tempest is likely to become a top-notch competitor!
Two wins means we’re in the bracket.
Bracket Round 1 - Zathrus, Beast of Burden
Win by judges decision
Ok, the complicated rule-driven bits.
NHRL allows for “bots” that consist of multiple robots. In fact, you get a weight bonus, and your 3-lb. robot can now be 4 lbs. I’m not sure I get why (something about the weight of batteries) but I know I don’t like the way most teams use this advantage.
Zathrus, Beast of Burden is what many would consider a “true multi-bot”… i.e. one that plays within the (probably) intended spirit of the rules, and is two smaller robots that add up to 4 lbs. Most multi-bots consist of an overweight “3 lb. bot” and a very small bot used mostly to receive the compensation allowed in the rule book.
The aforementioned “misuse” is debated and argued about endlessly in the NHRL community.
If you fight a multibot where the weight allocation is 50/50, neither of them tips the scales, and you have to knock out BOTH bots to get a knockout. If one bot is 51% you only need to knock out the larger bot.
This fight started off a bit weird right away. As is customary, we sauntered over to Zathrus, Beast of Burden’s (ZBB from here on) pit table to scope out the competition. The captain started talking in “pairs” and we slowly realized we were looking at a collection of almost regular-sized bots that he paired up into a true multi-bot configuration. The “cool!” in our minds was quickly followed by “Oh crap!” and we wandered back to our pit debating how to best prepare for this fight.
I told Razi about the 51% rule and he went back to ask about the weight distribution. Unfortunately, the captain didn’t know the specifics of the rule and it seemed to Razi that he thought we’d have to knock out both “elements” or bots. I confirmed my take on the rules with a fellow competitor and then with the staff at the pit desk.
We were right.
Before each fight, you check in at the pit desk and get weighed again. I told the pit desk operator that I’d like each segment of ZBB to be weighed separately. He knew what I was doing. ZBB came up and “the bot” was weighed together and then as I asked weighed separately. The weight distribution was 53% and 47% and he was brought up to speed on the rules by the staff.
I’ll always feel a little bad. We could have alerted ZBB to the specific rule we were going to lean on, but we didn’t. Is it up to us to alert our competitors about an intricacy in the rule book? Especially one that applies more so to them than most competitors? No. Still, it threw them off their game from the get-go. Maybe this is our first instance of pre-match intimidation, but I think it worked. The drivers of ZBB seemed worried knowing that the only outcome of that conversation was that Razi would aggressively go after the verticle spinner element of their bot, the heavier element, and Codename Pinto, a 3-lb. robot just had to knock out a 2.05-lb. bot to secure the win.
He did and he didn’t.
The two elements of Zathrus, Beast of Burden were a lifter bot and a vertical spinner. Knowing we’d go after the vert, they led out their lifter. I think the engineering behind ZBB’s lifter is elegant as can be and it looks incredibly dangerous. Had the lifter gotten under Pinto the vertical could come in behind us and taken us out easily (foreshadowing!!). Luckily Razi got a great hit in on the lifter-bot and ZBB was on their back heels from the start.
Within the first minute of the fight, Razi had taken out one element of ZBB, but not the one we needed to declare a knockout. The rest of the match was spent with Codename Pinto either upside down or laying a beating on a bot 50% smaller than it.
But… the little verticle spinner bot just wouldn’t quit.
I can’t imagine the engineering that goes into making a bot that tough, but I want some of it. The driver of the verticle element of ZBB was able to keep the bot going just enough to get them to a judge’s decision. Thankfully, we scored enough points that it went in our favor, but you never want to leave it up to the judges.
Bracket Round 2 - WarHard
Loss by knockout
This one can literally be played out in one GIF.
WarHard is a beast. We knew it, they knew it, everyone knew it.
We didn’t know they had a mini-bot component before we went down to the cage. In hindsight, I should have figured out how this story would play out. Both drivers are very top tier and we were outmatched—by bots and brains—this time at least.
The mini-bot immediately tangled Codename Pinto up and WarHard waited until we showed our backside and attacked with a hit packing more of a punch than anything we’ve ever experienced.
When we landed it was clear to us both that Codename Pinto was too beat up to be functional. Nevertheless, Razi didn’t have another tapout in him and thankfully the count out started soon thereafter.
As Razi was unloading Codename Pinto from the cage a battery fire almost started. There was POP and a whisp of smoke came from the rear of the bot. Everyone closed the cage back up and waited for it to ignite. It never did. I took over a now dangerous unload and brought Pinto to the hazard area to disassemble it. It was a tense few minutes but we were able to get the battery out of the bot without a fire starting. Lithium Polymer batteries are nasty things when they want to be. Once they catch fire there is little you can do to stop them from burning.
The damage in the photo above was all from that one hit. Bonkers. WarHard got us. They went on to win the tournament and there is no shame in losing to the best!
Conclusion
We had a great day. We figured out a lot of things and we worked together as a team better than we had before. Razi is in fact the team captain and I am in fact the dad… sometimes there is friction. I’m unbelievably proud of how Razi handled himself in adversity and success. That kid is something else and I hope we share a passion for competing in this great sport for years to come.
We need to replace our weapon motors and a few other parts, but all of that is a small price to pay for an amazing day with my teammate.
If you’ve somehow made it all this way and want to watch the fights… good on ya!