Bristol Bot Builders – North Down Havoc 2025
26th April 2025
After taking a winter break and then completing a few upgrades Uplift was ready to return to the arena for the first Bristol Bot Builders featherweight event of 2025.
Held at North Down Orchard in Somerset, the day followed the usual BEVs format – sportsman-ish robots (basically no spinners or high pressure weapons) fighting just for fun, firstly in a round-robin tournament and then a couple of rounds of 2 vs 2 matchups.
We arrived on time and got set up on a pit bench. I had then hoped to get Uplift ready early so we could go up immediately when the tech checks opened at midday but we were delayed slightly thanks to a troublesome misaligned barrel nut which stopped us from bolting the lid down properly.
Once that was sorted though we sailed through the safety check and were ready for our first fight, which turned out to be against the compressor powered flipper Flipperpool and the extremely pink and scary axe of Your Move.
Fight 1: Uplift vs Flipperpool vs Your Move
The first fight of the day! I knew roughly what to expect from Flipperpool as we’d seen them in action back in August, but Your Move was an unknown quantity at this stage.
Once we started it became immediately clear that Your Move’s axe was quite a hard hitter and the first part of the fight was spent mostly dodging out their way – with mixed success. They scored a few hits on us, mostly on the lifter arm. The axe left some nice dents but fortunately only did superficial damage.
With the tuning I’d done to the steering sensitivity since the previous event Uplift was driving better and keeping it under control was much easier – I think if we’d have met Your Move in Bristol they’d have managed to get more hits on us.
At one point I went for the pit button and tried to push Your Move into it, but unfortunately I miss-timed how long the pit takes to open after pressing the button which allowed Flipperpool to take advantage and almost get us into the pit. Somehow Uplift managed to keep balanced enough to drive off the edge and back into the arena centre.
A short time later I came head to head with Flipperpool who turned Uplift upside down. In what was our first ever real-world test of the self righter the lifter arm popped us back onto our wheels within a few seconds and we were able to carry on.
I then ran straight into Flipperpool again who turned us over and pushed us up against the arena wall. We self-righted successfully once more, but came to rest with the front of the robot resting on top of the wall. The angle meant the back wheels weren’t quite touching the floor and despite waggling the the lifting arm I couldn’t get Uplift to drop back down to the floor.
In a stroke of remarkable luck for us while we were self-righting Your Move’s safety link popped out which meant they were technically immobilised before Uplift. Flipperpool then pushed Your Move down the pit and we got second place!
Here’s some of the damage done by Your Move’s axe:
Fight 2: Uplift vs Perillelogram
Perillelogram is similar to Uplift in many ways despite having a rather different weapon design. It has four wheel drive and an electric lifter which can actually rotate through the full 360 degrees around the robot.
This was a tough but fun match and until the last few seconds quite an even fight – perhaps not surprising given how similar the robots were.
Perillelogram was very low at the front and I struggled to get underneath it most of the time. Uplift’s front forks were already quite battered at this point which definitely wasn’t helping, but I also think the dust all over the arena floor from the filler used to try and smooth over some of uneven bits affected our slicker tyres more than Perillelogram’s bicycle tyres.
I did get some good shoves in and Perillelogram didn’t manage to lift Uplift over either, so the fight went the full distance with the robots trading places in terms of who was on top the whole time.
In the final few seconds however Perillelogram got underneath and pushed us over the pit – and I do mean over! At the worst point almost half of Uplift was right over the pit, wobbling about and threatening to fall in.
I didn’t have a great view of exactly what was happening in the pit corner from where I was standing, so I just tried to stay calm and when Perillelogram went in for another push drove as hard in reverse as I could. Uplift somehow managed to pull itself right across the opening of the pit and back onto more solid ground on the other side just as the fight ended.
Fights that last the full time go to the judges and for BEVs events that’s the audience. It was pretty close but in the end they cheered a bit louder for Perillelogram and they were declared the winners. Well deserved and I was still very happy with how Uplift performed and even happier it didn’t have any damage to repair before our next fight!
Fight 3: Uplift vs Agamemnon
In our final main tournament fight we were matched against Agamemnon, another electric lifter! Their lifter is powered by a linear actuator and while relatively slow to operate it also works very effectively as a grabber.
Agamemnon had performed strongly so far and I was pretty sure Uplift was about to go 0-3, so imagine my surprise when we got straight underneath them not once but twice and on the second time even attempted a mostly successful lift!
We then had a bit of back and forth – they got underneath us and we pushed them around a bit – but neither of us gained a huge advantage.
It was around this time though that I noticed Uplift wasn’t driving right – it seemed extremely slow to turn and even when going in a straight line it was very sluggish to respond. I kept attacking Agamemnon as best I could, but with our reduced manoeuvrability they were able to get under us once again.
Suddenly Uplift started driving normally which caught me a bit by surprise – Agamemnon was almost able to get a good pin on us with their lifting arm until I regained control. During their attack though they wedged themselves under the arena wall and weren’t able to get free.
I took a couple of seconds to go over and hit the pit release button and then went in to free them – it had been an excellent fight so far and I wanted to keep it going.
With the pit now open I was hoping to make the most of the fact that Uplift seemed to get underneath Agamemnon more often than they were getting under us but a short time later Uplift started driving strangely again.
I tried to keep away from Agamemnon while I played around with the controls a bit, to see if I could reset it the same way it came back last time. Unfortunately I ended up bouncing up the wedge of Agamemnon and when Uplift landed back on the floor it was driving at full speed again… straight towards the pit. I tried to steer away but it was too late, Uplift drifted backwards into the pit and Agamemnon got the win.
So despite our best efforts and actually I think some of Uplift’s strongest performances to date, we ended up going 0 – 3 in the tournament. The day was not over yet though, as we still had the 2 vs 2 team fights to go!
Fight 4: Uplift & Pizza Time vs Pallas & Mucha Lucha
Uplift was paired up with the wonderful axe bot Pizza Time for the teams tournament. Neither of us had had many wins so far, would it be time for some redemption?
Our first fight was against Mucha Lucha which is a very effective flipper and Pallas which is armed with a rear punching spike.
The 2 vs 2 fights are always complete chaos and this one was no exception – all 4 robots were fast and manoeuvrable and there’s never much strategy involved. Mucha Lucha got several great flips on both us and Pizza Time but we were able to self-right and get back into the fight quickly.
At one point Pallas seemed stuck under the wall so I rammed them hard several times with Uplift to try and keep them there longer. They did get out eventually but it took them out of the fight for a little while which meant Uplift and Pizza Time could gang up on Mucha Lucha for a bit.
Just before the end of the fight Mucha Lucha managed to throw Uplift over so hard it did a complete barrel roll and landed back on it’s wheels. Cease was called and the audience voted for our team as the winners!
It was during this fight that I finally realised what was causing Uplift’s intermittent drive sluggishness earlier in the day – the lifting arm when fully lowered was able to lift the front wheels off the floor. I’d removed some material from the underside of the arm during the winter redesign so it would clear the thicker top armour that was added, but this also meant it could lower about 5mm further than it could before – luckily a pretty easy issue to resolve for next time.
Uplift was starting to look a little battered at this point but it was all just superficial damage. There was a new dent in the front that looked suspiciously like the tip of Pallas’ spike from where I was ramming them against the wall!
Fight 5: Uplift & Pizza Time vs Terabyte & Agamemnon
One more fight to go and it was against some serious opposition. Agamemnon I don’t think had lost a fight all day while Terabyte is a formidable flipper that is always driven extremely well and very difficult to get under.
Watching this fight back it looks like Pizza Time and us perfectly coordinated our attacks as he went for straight for Terabyte and we went after Agamemnon… in reality I just drove to whoever was closest…
We quickly got a great lift on Agamemnon and pushed them up to the far end of the arena. They came back and almost managed to grab us with their arm but Uplift just about managed to spin away.
Terabyte seemed to lose drive on one side so for a while Uplift and Pizza Time ganged up on Agamemnon. I tried to have a go at Terabyte and immediately rode straight up their wedge and almost got flipped over.
I then went back to Agamemnon who after a short chase got stuck on the wall and I was able to wedge Uplift’s arm underneath them, pick them up and carry them before spinning around and slamming them into the arena wall. In hindsight I might have been better dumping them in the pit which had just opened, but the spin looked awesome and I regret nothing!
After another bit of chasing Agamemnon they got a brief clamp on Uplift but luckily our forks dug into a gap in the floor and they seemingly couldn’t drag us anywhere before letting us go again. Terabyte was still struggling on one wheel and then miss-timed a flip so I was able to roll them over and down into the pit.
Pizza Time and Uplift then ganged up on Agamemnon who in the final few seconds trapped Pizza Time on their wedge and took a suicidal lunge into the pit. This left Uplift as the last robot standing and our team was therefore given the win!
Summary
Despite the fact we finished the day with only two wins from five fights, I was very happy with Uplift’s performance. Compared to Bristol it was much easier to drive, didn’t suffer from any mechanical faults and the new drive motors run much cooler than the old ones. We didn’t even need to charge the batteries so were able to spend most of the day watching the other fights which was fantastic.
There’s some small changes I’d like to make for next time – first and foremost stopping the lifter from lifting the front wheels off the floor. I’d also like to make some tougher front forks – still plastic to keep within the BEVs rules but perhaps something harder than HDPE?
Apart from that Uplift just needs a (very) good clean and it’ll be ready for the next Bristol Bot Builders outing in August!
