BYO Battlebot

An anonymous submitter sent in: "With the new season of BattleBots coming up (filmed in SF over Memorial Day weekend) everyone is sick of the same-old design of a glorified R/C car. This site has the full design for a bot that runs on an onboard 486 and is controlled off a laptop with quake-style controls! Build your own for around $100 by using mostly old parts." On the other hand, Coolrobots.com has info on how to build an expensive battlebot.

Comments

Slashdot's Slashbot

[GeorgeH]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned that Slashdot has their own battle bot in the works. I'm also surprised that I came across this on sourceforge instead of reading it on Slashdot.
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Windows controlling it?

[Soko]

From the site:

Yep! This is a 486DX2/66 running Windows 98 on a 340 meg laptop hard drive.

...gives new meaning to "Blue Screen Of Death", don't it?

"Impossible to drive" says the article

[IronChef]

Quoth the article: Most battlebots are just glorified RC cars. They use off-the-shelf speed controllers, and stock RC controllers. Unfortunately, this makes them impossible to drive.

It's not the use of R/C car parts that is the problem. A good R/C car is a dream to drive, very controllable. The problem seems to be with the operator's choice of controllers. I keep seeing these sort of twin-stick controllers in use for simple wedge bots with no extra weapons; why the hell don't the operators use pistol-grip style controllers?

I could never really get the hang of twin sticks, but I can pilot a car pretty well with a pistol grip. AFAIK all serious R/C car guys use them, and for good reason.

The Battlebots arena is PLAGUED with really awful driving. I'm sure a heavy bot isn't as easy to drive as an R/C race car, but c'mon, most of these guys could do a lot better, and I think better controls would help. (I saw one guy using a freaking joystick... I think he got his clock cleaned, too. Use the right tool for the job, Chester!) The videos they show of the designers tearing up junk in parking lots... not a great way to practice. A parking lot is a lot bigger than the arena, and poor control won't be punished as much. Especially when you are wrecking a TV or an aquarium, instead of another bot.

I know some bots need more than just movement controls, and a 2-channel pistol grip isn't adequate. Nonetheless, it sure looks like some teams are sabotaging themselves with a poor choice for mobility controls. Mobility is life; precise driving should be the first requirement for any bot.

Seems to me a team should have one driver and one gunner (yep, some do, I know), or perhaps one operator using some innovative controls like footswitches to operate the weapons. A pistol grip with 2 foot switches for the bot's gadgets -- that would be the way to go!

That's still retarded.

[ROBOKATZ]

Battlebots is completely lame because the robots are human controlled. And because they are human controlled, they are cannot, by definition, be called robots.

Just because the device the human is using to control the "robot" is a computer and the "robot" has a computer onboard does not make it a robot.

With the cheap processing power available today and the current state of AI there is no excuse, bar incompetence, for this competition to not consist of truly autonomous robots. Until then, Battlebots will continue to be a show pandering to the lowest common denominator, relying on sex and loud music to attract an audience.

You call this a Battlebot?!

[jsse]

I've submit this cool-looking, Debian GNU/Linux powered battlebot TuxBot but got rejected by /. Gods.

Now this rugged oranges box got spotlighted?

What's wrong with you guys?