Questions and Answers about Combat Robotics from Team Run Amok
Combat Robot Design Tools from Team Run Amok
A great deal of combat robot design is trial, error, and study of successful competitors. However, there are some elements of design that can be fairly well quantified -- at least well enough for a 'reality check' on your ideas.
Presented here are descriptions, explanations, and links to combat robot design tools developed or adapted by Team Run Amok.
This applet opens in its own window and models robot drivetrain performance based on robot weight, motors, operating voltage, gear reduction, and tire diameter. Calculates speed, acceleration, current consumption, and controller capacity requirement. Allows for adjustment of traction conditions and warns of drivetrains that allow drive motors to stall. Allows quick selection of suitable drive components and optimization of drive variables. An example walk-thru of a drivetrain analysis using the calculator is available: Example Drivetrain Analysis using the Tentacle Torque Calculator
History - The original Team Tentacle Torque/Amp Calculator was written by Steve Judd of Tentacle Combat Robotics. A highly respected combat robot builder and a selfless supporter of the sport, Steve died in 2010 after a long fight with respiratory disease. His loss was deeply felt in the community.
This Version - Following Steve Judd's death, Team Run Amok began a series of updates to the calculator that include support for new motors, expanded help files, and revised formatting. Steve's core program is unchanged, and a link back to the original version appears in the upper right corner of the 'Reloaded' calculator.
May 2018 Update - A major update of motor and battery data:
The pull-down motor selections have been expanded with popular new motors and updated motor performance figures.
The listings of all possible combinations of 'can' motors and their matching BaneBots gearbox options have been replaced with a popup window that displays the BaneBots P60 and P80 gearbox ratios. Select your BaneBots motor and fill in the gear ratio from the list.
The 'battery chooser' now includes listings from the extensive 'SPARC Tools' LiPoly data file.
Other Versions - Team Killerbotics and SPARC Tools have also produced updated versions of the torque/amp calculator:
This Excel spreadsheet fully models and graphs the performance of rotary weapons made up of rings (tubes), disks, and rectangular bars sharing a common center of rotation. You may combine elements to make up your weapon such as a ring and a disk to make a 'tuna can' spinner, or you may input a known moment of inertia for CAD cut-out disks or asymmetric weapons. The model accepts any material with a known density, any brushed or brushless PMDC motor with known performance parameters, and any gear reduction ratio.
Calculates weapon mass, moment of inertia, stored kinetic energy, tip speed, spin-up time, and approximate battery capacity requirement. Includes conversion calculations for english/metric units, and a table of common material densities. A sample output chart is shown at right.
Update - Version 19.c released on December 20th, 2017 had a reported problem with the battery calculation function. Version 19d uploaded December 21st, 2017 corrects that problem and defaults to brushless drive motor calculation.
Requires Microsoft Excel. Download and open as a standard .xls speadsheet.
Prefer an on-line spinner calculator? This lite version of the full spreadsheet runs in your browser window and calculates weapon mass, moment of inertia, stored kinetic energy, and spin-up time. Suitable for use with smart phones and tablets as well as laptop/desktop computers.
An overhead hammer weapon powered by an electric motor is really just a spinner weapon with very limited rotation. With that in mind I modified the Run Amok Spinner Weapon Spreadsheet to model a hammer swinging thru 180 degrees. I originally wrote this spreadsheet for my own use in talking a builder out of designing an electric hammer weapon, but as hammer weapons are becoming more popular in the 'sportsman' class I thought there might be some general interest in this tool.
This Excel spreadsheet defaults to modeling hammers starting from horizontal and swinging up and over thru 180 degrees. Calculations account for gravity but do not include the inertial moment of the motor armature. Graphic output shows time and energy storage thru 180 degrees of rotation, with a text box commenting on the suitability of the selected motor gearing in achieving best actuation speed and maximum energy storage at impact.
The current Version 2.2 has improved on the earlier modeling algorithm and includes the option to model hammers with more or less than 180 degrees of swing.
Tired of the same old flipper designs? Having trouble finding insect-sized pneumatic components? Spring powered flippers are awesome, but the rewind and firing mechanisms are poorly known.
I've put together animated sketches and discussions of the pros and cons for several little-known spring/elastic flipper layouts that should light up your design imagination:
The 'Choo-Choo' overrunning clutch winder;
The constant-torque 'Snail Cam';
The compact 'Slip Gear' ratchet; and
The elegant and stable 'Servo Latch' reset.
Step-by-step instruction on selecting an optimum gear reduction and wheel diameter combination for a combat robot of a given weight powered by specific Permanent Magnet Direct Current (PMDC) motors. Although these instructions may be used alone, this document is intended as a companion to the Team Tentacle Torque/Amp Calculator discussed above. It provides an explanation of theory and equations used by that applet and offers guidance on adjustments required for arena size and unusual conditions.
Frequently Asked Questions about spinning weapon design from the 'Ask Aaron' website. This FAQ provides theory and design advice on energy storage, rotational speed, motor selection, and spin-up time. Additional discussion on spinning weapons is available in the Ask Aaron Combat Robot Weapons archive.
This a useful companion document to the 'Team Run Amok Spinner Weapon Excel Spreadsheet' mentioned above.
This page has links to several topic-specific guides authored by Team Run Amok to assist combat robot builders in selecting, setting up, enhancing, and troubleshooting radio control systems.
Topics include techniques to cure radio reception problems, explanation of radio features useful to combat robot operation, definition of R/C terminology, and use of solid-state gyroscopes to improve robot driveability.
A 4-bar lifter can be an effective combat robot weapon, particularly in the 'sportsman' classes that have limits on spinning weapons. For many years combat robot builders turned to the T.i. Combat Robotics 4-Bar simulator (archive link) for help in designing and optimizing their lifter linkage layout. When the T.i. website went off line I arranged with Adam Wrigley to host the webpage for the 4-Bar simulator here at RunAmok.tech and all was fine... until Microsoft Windows removed support for the version of Visual Basic used by the 4-bar simulator.
All is not lost. The new Run Amok 4-Bar Lifter spreadsheet calculates and graphically displays the range of motion and torque requirements for front-bar and rear-bar torque-powered 4-bar lifter designs. The user interface will be familiar to users of the T.i. simulator, and the graphic outputs are directly comparable. The spreadsheet will run on any version of Microsoft Excel from the last 20 years or so, but the current version 1.01 does not display correctly on Google Sheets. Stay tuned.
Way back in 2004 Team Run Amok proposed an unusual 'inverted' 4-bar linkage for insect-class combat robots (image at right) that allowed an R/C servo to indirectly power a front lifting wedge via a spring-loaded bar to isolate the servo from shock loading and reduce the servo torque requirement. Servo selection and linkage design optimization for this style of linkage has been guesswork because no existing 4-bar simulator allowed for analysis of the inverted design.
While building the Team Run Amok 4-Bar Lifter Spreadsheet discussed above I realized that a few relatively simple modifications could produce a related spreadsheet to model the inverted 4-bar mechanism and remove the guesswork. This spreadsheet is the result of that effort.
The T.i. Combat Robotics website was home to a number of useful combat robot design discussions and tools.
When their website went dark in October of 2015, Team Run Amok gained permission to grab an archive copy of their 'Designing Around the Gyroscopic Effect' page for safe keeping here at RunAmok.tech.
After walking you thru the math, the page offers a simple javascript calculator that will model the stability of specific robot designs to let you know how serious the gyro effect will be on your planned robot. If you're designing a big drum or vertical disk/bar spinner you'll want to make use of this calculator to avoid unpleasant surprizes in the behavior of the finished robot.
3) The builders of Robot Wars competitor 'Hassocks Hog' put together an Excel spreadsheet to model the performance of a wide range of flipper designs.
The Hassocks Hog website remains operational as of mid-2017, but you may want to download my 'printer friendly' PDF version of the flipper calculator page to have a set of instructions to follow when using the spreadsheet.
To see the most recent questions or to ask a new question, go to the
Copyright 2015 by Mark Joerger -- all rights reserved.
This Excel spreadsheet fully models and graphs the performance of rotary weapons made up of rings (tubes), disks, and rectangular bars sharing a common center of rotation. You may combine elements to make up your weapon such as a ring and a disk to make a 'tuna can' spinner, or you may input a known moment of inertia for CAD cut-out disks or asymmetric weapons. The model accepts any material with a known density, any brushed or brushless PMDC motor with known performance parameters, and any gear reduction ratio.
An overhead hammer weapon powered by an electric motor is really just a spinner weapon with very limited rotation. With that in mind I modified the Run Amok Spinner Weapon Spreadsheet to model a hammer swinging thru 180 degrees. I originally wrote this spreadsheet for my own use in talking a builder out of designing an electric hammer weapon, but as hammer weapons are becoming more popular in the 'sportsman' class I thought there might be some general interest in this tool.
Tired of the same old flipper designs? Having trouble finding insect-sized pneumatic components? Spring powered flippers are awesome, but the rewind and firing mechanisms are poorly known.
A 4-bar lifter can be an effective combat robot weapon, particularly in the 'sportsman' classes that have limits on spinning weapons. For many years combat robot builders turned to the T.i. Combat Robotics 4-Bar simulator (
Way back in 2004 Team Run Amok proposed an unusual 'inverted' 4-bar linkage for insect-class combat robots (image at right) that allowed an R/C servo to indirectly power a front lifting wedge via a spring-loaded bar to isolate the servo from shock loading and reduce the servo torque requirement. Servo selection and linkage design optimization for this style of linkage has been guesswork because no existing 4-bar simulator allowed for analysis of the inverted design.
Want to try your hand at a pneumatic flipper? We have several resources for you:
