1 lb Combat Robot

Ant-weight Vertical Bar Spinner Robot: 2018

This was a rather fun project that I developed back in high school as part of a robotics competition.

We were tasked with creating a combat robot using cardboard for a material and a small square of aluminum to make some form of weapon. Electrical components and designs were totally up to us, as long as the robot only weighed 1 lb in total.

I had grown up with Battle bots so, this project was something that I was extremely interested in. Given that the robots would be made out of mainly cardboard, I knew that a high velocity kinetic weapon was the best approach. Bar spinners were always a favorite design of mine, so I laminated the provided aluminum together to create a solid weapon that would take large chunks out of a robot’s armor, rather than smaller slices.

From testing with a plastic blade, it proved to be quite effective. Unfortunately, during the day of the competition, there was only one other functional robot, so I only got to only have one actual match.

Fortunately, though, my robot performed exactly as expected and literally split the other robot in half in a single hit.