Texas Combat Robotics – Horns of Fury
Background
In the Spring of 2024, I had the opportunity to be a founding member of a brand-new combat robotics team and compete in the first-ever SXSW Battle Bots Metal Mayhem as a representative for UT Austin. I served as the team’s Mechanical Design Lead as we designed a 15 lb combat robot. The driving factor for this project was time, as we only had 5 weeks from the team’s inception to the day of the competition.
CAD Modeling
Manufacturing and Assembly
Completed Robot and Competition Results
Mechanical Engineering Senior Design 1
Background
In the first half of senior design, all student groups are assigned the same design challenge. In Fall 2023, the challenge was to design a 3lb Combat Robot that would compete in a tournament at the end of the semester.
Research and Initial Ideas
We started our design process by researching combat robotics, taking inspiration from other designs we came across, and sketching out different combinations of drives and weaponry. After comparing these concepts using a Pugh chart, we decided to design a robot with 2-wheel drive and a beater bar weapon.
CAD Design
After settling on a concept, we moved on to designing the robot in Solidworks. Each part was designed with its manufacturing process in mind, following best practices for the techniques we used such as CNC milling, 3D printing, and laser cutting. We also utilized design for assembly principles such as standardizing our fasteners and breaking down the system into subassemblies.
Design for Manufacturing – CNC Mill
Design for Assembly – Wheel Subassembly
Prototyping and Iteration
As we moved through the design process, we prototyped, tested, and improved different components to refine the robot as we went. One improvement we made was in the shape of our wheel asssemblies, making the hubs shorter but stockier to improve their rigidity and refining our foam cutting process to increase uniformity.
Another iteration we made was going from a bent polycarbonate top plate to a PLA 3D printed top. This change was made because it allowed us to save weight, and after examining our competition, we noticed that there were no hammers or other top striking weapons, so we were hardly sacrificing protection.
Final Build and Results
Our final robot build came together quiete cleanly, right at the 3lb weight limit. In the tournament, we decisevly won the first 2 rounds by KO and unanimous judges decision. In the semifinals, we suffered a critical failure on our power switch that caused the robot to power cycle from the vibrations to our weapon and unfortunately that ended our tourament run. Despite this, I am very proud of how my team worked together to design this robot and our semi-final result.
Texas Battle Bot League
In Spring of 2023, the University of Texas Battle Bot League hosted its first ever Battle Bot competition. The battle bots TV show and creating my own battle bots out of Lego Mindstorms robots was the definitive factor for my early interest in engineering and robotics, so I jumped at the chance to finally create a real battle bot of my own.
Forming Team TBD (The Big Daddy) Robot with six close friends, I served as the team’s CAD Lead. As CAD lead, I designed much of the robot’s frame, armor, and motor mounts, as well as calculating pulley ratios for weapon speed.
Featuring a vertical spinner weapon rotating at 18,750 RPM and made out of aluminum with steel bolts, our robot packed a huge punch.
