Built to battle: UCLA students gear up their BattleBots for annual RoboGames competition
By Samantha Masunaga
April 19, 2012 12:43 a.m.
The drill press screamed as a student punched holes in what looked like a large, spiked dog’s collar.
Nearby, students fiddled with small wheels or pored over the delicate cutting of steel at another machine.
“It looks like we’re down to the wire this year,” said Alex Browne with a shout, over the whirring and buzzing in the student machine shop. “But it’s not that bad.”
Members of the UCLA American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ BattleBots team put the final touches on their six hand-built robots, just in time for the RoboGames competition in San Mateo starting Friday. The yearly contest pits engineers of all levels, from amateur to professional, against each other in a 16-by-16-foot bulletproof arena, where talent, strategy and destruction are king.
Design is important, but there’s really only one thing that matters ““ does it move?
This criterion, along with the aggression of the robot’s human driver, helps teams advance in the double-elimination contest, said Alex Jozefov, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student and current president of the club.
Preparation for this year began in November. The club will enter robots in the 3-pound category, and one bot in the 60-pound weight class, said Browne, a third-year mechanical engineering student and next year’s club president.
A majority of the group’s 30 members come from mechanical engineering backgrounds, though there are a few electrical engineers and bioengineers. Last year, a classics student was part of the mix. “It only takes an engineering way of thinking to be successful,” Jozefov said. “Classes help, but they’re not the only important things.”
Veteran members of the club teach newer members about the basics of BattleBots ““ types of weapons, the inner workings of a robot and how to use 3-D computer software to design the robotic aspects. This year, the club started a new member development project, in which all members were split into small groups and new members had a chance to design their own robots from start to finish, Browne said.
This type of hands-on experience was attractive to Emily Holden, a third-year mechanical engineer who joined the group this fall. Her group is working on a drum bot made primarily of aluminum and a cylindrical drum with attached screws. When the robot comes into contact with another bot, it will ideally cause damage with the rapidly spinning screws, or flip the opponent onto the ground, possibly breaking it upon impact.
“Classroom knowledge is theoretical,” she said. “The application and machinery are things I didn’t know from class.”
This year’s projects include many strategically designed bots, from the defense-oriented wedge bots, to the mechanically complex shell spinner, which combines armor and weaponry into one constantly revolving steel tube with teeth.
“It’s been fairly rough,” said Brian Downey, a third-year mechanical engineering student and group leader for the shell spinner, called 8 Smack. “I’ve already broken two of the bits in the shop. It’s one of the tougher ones to build, but it’s been a lot of fun figuring out how to engineer it.”
While team members can determine what projects they want to work on, they are required to present their ideas to the group to justify funding, which comes from engineering alumni donations and private companies like Boeing Co., Jozefov said. Costs for a 3-pound robot can run from $300 to $650, depending on materials. Browne estimated that the 60-pound robot cost about $1,500.
“The biggest thing is that you can sit here and come up with your ideas, but until you go there, and you see all these bots, you get so many more ideas,” Browne said.
