Bristol Bot Builders – BEVs Featherweights + RoboNerd Lite 2024
17th August 2024
Well here we are… Uplift’s (and my) first ever event – Bristol Bot Builders Featherweight BEVs at the Left Handed Giant Brewery in Bristol!
Going into it I was hoping Uplift’s drive would perform strongly as that was quite well tested by this point, however the lifting arm was more of an unknown. At this point I’d only done a quick lift test and made sure that it was capable of tipping the robot back onto it’s wheels if we got flipped upside down. It worked fine, but I had concerns about it’s longer term durability.
I was in the garage until about 9pm the evening before the event, packing up tools, applying the vinyls to the outside of the robot and checking all the super vital bolts holding it all together were done up tight. One of the barrel nuts for holding the top cover on had moved out of alignment so the bolt wouldn’t go in fully, fortunately just a small issue we’d need to sort once we got to Bristol.
We arrived at the venue with time to spare, got setup at our pit table and started getting the robot ready for the safety inspections, which we passed without any problems (although it turns out a yellow power LED in direct bright sunlight isn’t the best idea… who knew?).
The event started with a round of 3 way fights and then two rounds of 1 vs 1, before finishing with a couple of 2 vs 2 doubles rounds.
Fight 1: Uplift vs Pizza Time vs Captain Kathryn Chainway
Two quite scary opponents to start my robot fighting career off with, but I was actually pretty thrilled with this draw as it had great potential to be a really fun fight. Pizza Time has an awesome axe that hits very hard and (as the name hints at) Captain Kathryn Chainway is armed with a chainsaw which was my number one priority to stay as far away from as I could.
Naturally almost as soon as the fight started I ended up right underneath the chainsaw which promptly came down onto one of Uplift’s lifting arms, only doing superficial damage but leaving some impressive looking battle scars in the HDPE plastic nonetheless:
Luckily, while I was busy being chainsaw’d Pizza Time launched an attack on Chainway with it’s axe, and Chainway’s drive was never quite the same after that so I was able to keep well away from it for the rest of the fight.
Pizza Time and Uplift pushed each other around a bit, at one point getting stuck together and spinning around in circles. Pizza Time did manage to leave quite a few nice dents in Uplift with it’s axe, but didn’t damage anything important:
After some more pushing each other about the pit went down and an incredibly fortuitous combination of Uplift being in the right place at the right time while Pizza Time was in the worst place at the worst possible time handed me the chance to end the fight and push Pizza Time down the pit. My first win!
We got Uplift back to the pits and gave it a quick check over. All the damage looked superficial and the motors, while quite warm, seemed to have survived the three minutes just fine. So we got the battery back on charge and waited for our next fight.
Fight 2: Uplift vs Weapon Of Choice
In our next match we were up against Weapon Of Choice, another four wheel drive robot like Uplift, but with interchangeable weapons. They actually told us afterwards they had wanted to use their lifter in our fight, but couldn’t get it going so they went with their axe.
The match started with us both pushing each other around a bit, I managed to get in underneath them more often than not but they were able to land lots of blows with their axe while I was doing so.
I missed a few opportunities to try and flip them over (driving and lifting is hard, I definitely need more practice!) but eventually turned them over. This negated their axe and their wedge and from then on I was able to push them around and into the walls without any problems.
Despite being upside down they were still driving spectacularly well, the pit opened but I wasn’t able to get them in. Towards the end of the fight I started being a little more cautious as they tried to lure me closer to the pit – Uplift is very fast but skids around a fair bit, so there was every chance I could have miscalculated and fallen in myself.
The fight went the distance though and Uplift was awarded the win by the crowd!
Two fights down, Uplift was still in good shape – a few more dents and scuffs but all it needed was a quick battery change and a bit of time to cool the motors off and it was ready to go again.
Fight 3: Uplift vs Beep Beep Mareep
Our final 1 vs 1 was against Beep Beep Mareep, another four wheel drive electric lifter but also wonderfully sheep-themed (after the Pokemon Mareep).
Uplift seemed to have either a traction and/or power advantage which coupled with our front forks meant I could push Mareep around without too much trouble at the start.
Uplift briefly caught some air when it launched itself off Mareep’s face, and with both robots being fast and manoeuvrable neither ever really got the chance to try and flip the other one over.
The pit opened up and I almost got him down but in my haste Uplift slide slightly further than was optimal and ended up straddling the edge of the pit. I tried a quick twitch of the wheels to get back off, but it just ended up doing a half barrel roll and down into the pit it fell!
Fight 4: Uplift & Petrichor vs Easy Over & Flipperpool
Our last fight of the day was a doubles match. We were paired with Petrichor, our neighbour in the pits and another four wheel drive electric lifter. Up against Easy Over, a big-wheeled frying pan armed thwackbot and Flipperpool, a pneumatic flipper that instead of the usual CO2 tank uses an onboard air compressor to continuously recharge the flipper.
Go Team Pink Tape!
This was an absolute blast but also definitely our least successful fight of the day. As is usually the case when there’s four or more robots in the arena together, the fight started off in complete chaos.
Easy Over turned out to be a very difficult robot to deal with, as it’s body is so high up. Uplift being so low wasn’t really able to do much against it, while repeatedly getting bashed by the frying pan. About halfway through the fight Easy Over got a great hit on the top armour right above one of our drive motors.
From that point on I could tell Uplift wasn’t driving quite right, and when the robots were unloaded from the arena there was an ominous smell coming from inside. When we got back to the pits we noticed the front left wheel was completely locked up.
We weren’t sure at the time whether it was just a motor failure, or whether the motor burned up because the gearbox had seized after the hit from Easy Over (I’ve since discovered the gearbox is fine, so it was just the motor). Either way though, we had no spares with us so we had to drop out of our final doubles match.
Fun fact – it turns out Uplift wasn’t the only one to suffer at the hands of the lethal frying pan… Easy Over’s team mate Flipperpool also suffered in a couple of friendly fire incidents! You can read about that in Flipperpool’s writeup of the event.
Heading home
Uplift survived! Mostly. Hurrah!
I have a few of things I want to do before next time aside from giving Uplift a good clean, replacing the burnt out motor and a few of the more battered armour pieces.
First and foremost – more driving practice! You can see in the some of the footage that the steering is a little twitchy at the moment, so I’ll be dialling that back a bit more to hopefully find the balance I want between outright speed and controllability.
I also need to practice driving and lifting at the same time. You might have noticed I didn’t actually use the lifter much during this event – despite the fact (contrary to my expectations) it was working fine the whole time. Turns out coordinating driving and lifting takes more brain power than sleep deprived me had on the day, but some more practice should help with that.
Despite not making our final fight, I was still super thrilled with how the day had gone. Uplift had performed beyond my expectations (winning fights was not on my cards) and made it through the event largely still in one piece.
We had an absolutely fantastic time meeting everybody and chatting with all those who came up to our pit table. I’m hoping to have Uplift back together for the next BEVs event in April, but if not we’ll definitely be back again this time next year!