Mathematica and BattleBots

hesheboy writes "Wolfram.com has a story about building a battlebot with Mathematica: 'October 28, 2002--Looking for action with brains-over-brawn appeal? William McHargue, a freelance physicist and long-time Mathematica user, is one of many who find this combination in BattleBots, the new fighting-robot craze. "With BattleBots, one can be aggressive and yet nobody gets hurt," says McHargue. Recently, McHargue was featured in Mechanical Engineering magazine for work on Tesla's Tornado, his BattleBot.'"

Comments

hmmm

[lingqi]

Maybe he is onto something design-wise - but I don't think it's "interesting."

What I mean is (drawing on real-life examples) that while bacteria and viruses (yes it's spelled viruses, see here), I don't really think that's what we are looking for when doing battlebots.

for the longest time, rambots (bots that basically has a lot of power and a wedge shape) would win consistently. This guy's little contraption is not much different. the bot still depends on a very rudamentary skill to attack / defend. - the only difference is that he usese Mathematica for modelling vs. say, ProE (which I think would be better anyhow).

real brain over brawn would be, let's say, an (almost) universal manipulator, and enough sensors, reactory circuits, and capability that the robot will make reasonable decisions to duck, block, parry, jump, or just (calculatedly) take an attack, and then be able to exploit the other robot's weakness at the same time.

Re:hmmm

[Nephrite]

I agree mostly but you really describe the consequence of a real problem. The basic problem with the battlebots is that they're just too damn err... strong. Who needs that manipulator you describe if just hacking and bludgeoning is more effective? I would suggest introducing some restrictions on the bots' armor strength so that using brute force would damage the aggressor itself (if you use force too excessively of course), thus promoting use of more sophisticated devices and algorithms in the bot construction.

As to our 'bot-of-the-day' it is just another hard thing bashing on its opponent. Also, I just don't see anything special in using some math software for designing it. After all most engineers calculate their inventions before building them.

Emotional reaction from geeks?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am constantly amazed how the tech people, who are supposed to be able to rely on logic on important decisions, resort to the worst kind of emotional knee-jerk reactions in this matter.

I am a postdoc and run a research unit in a physics lab. If I hire someone and he starts giving me political bullshit about our exclusive use of Windows and Windows applications, he'd better be damn good at what he does or he'll be out in a minute for disrupting the peace in the group.

Get the right tool for the job. Period. We don't have time to teach new students to use Linux or other free software. In fact, we don't have any reason to do so. Create plots with SigmaPlot or Origin, use Matlab and Excel to analyse the data and write your reports and papers in Word so that the coauthors can read and modify your text without having to learn a programming language (TeX/LaTeX). And no, the export and import functions in StarOffice/OpenOffice do not work properly.

Legal question on mathematica errors ?

[krazyninja]

...BattleBots safety regulations required him to perform an analysis to prove that the laser would not harm anyone viewing the fight. McHargue performed the calculations for this analysis and typeset the report using Mathematica....
If the rules are so strict, this raises a legal question for most mathematical software. Consider this scenario: Due to a bug (which could have been accidental), mathematica reports an "unsafe" value to a "safe" value.
2. McHargue uses this unsafe laser in his bot.
3. Somebody gets hurt by viewing his fight.

Legally who is responsible? Wolfram? McHargue? The organisers? What???

Re:Any Free Alternative?

[RazorJ_2000]

I've used all 4 main tools: Mathematica, Maple, Mathcad, and Matlab. All 4 have their various strengths and weaknesses. Overall, if I had to choose one as "the best or most comprehensive", I'd have to choose Mathematica. Now, if only symbolic math is important to you, then try Maple. It's a good product and strong with symbolic math. You can download a free demo from them.

Missing the point. Re:hmmm

[Dasein]

I don't care about the software he uses. The design is neat. It's the first spinnerbot that I know of that spins the entire chassis instead of just shell.

To do this the wheels that the bot spins on have to brake at precise intervals to provide the ability to do anything but just sit there and spin. That means he probably has some form of onboard computing.

BattleBots is neat but one of the things that's always detracted from it in my mind is that the bots always seemed like big, strong, remote controlled cars with no intelligence. This seems like a small step towards intelligence and may actually raise the bar.