Page 36 - Build Your Own Combat Robot

First Chapter 1: Welcome to Competition Robots 17
The hardest part Person the blink of an eye! We parts amazed us. We became
for us was just continued met some of the most part of this amazing community of
getting there. We incredible (and nicest) robot builders and battlers and the
had no sponsors and people. The designs we saw camaraderie warmed us. It was
had to pay our own way for and the creativity of the engineers one of the best weeks of my life.
everything. It was tough, and it and imagineers behind their bots —Ronni Katz
took months to pay off that credit inspired us. The generosity in the
card, but I would do it all again in sharing of ideas, tools, and even

T he Scope of This Book

Building a bot is not that difficult—if you’ve done your homework on the basic el-
ements involved. It may take you a while to figure out how to do new things, and it
might take a long time before you build your dream machine, but consider your
first project a learning process—patience and persistence are key when you’re
building a bot.
Robotics is one of those fields where you need to be able to wear a lot of differ-
ent hats. That means you must know a little bit about a lot of things, including mo-
tors, electronics, wiring, computers, radio transmitters and receivers, batteries,
gears, belts, bearings, chains, sprockets, metals, plastics, drilling, cutting, thread-
ing, bending, and welding—just to name a few.
You don’t have to be an expert in all of these categories—you just need to un-
derstand the basics behind each one. Most combat robots are built by a team of
people. Each team member is knowledgeable about certain areas of robot build-
ing. When you get a group of people together who all know different pieces of the
process, it reduces the burden on each individual for having to be an expert on ev-
erything. After you have built a couple of bots and competed in a few contests,
you’ll become something of an expert in all of the different categories because you
will have been involved to some degree with every part of building the bot.
Probably the number-one question that gets asked of a bot warrior is, “How do
I build a robot?” Well, nobody can give you a quick answer. It usually takes
months to years to learn how to build a bot. There is just too much stuff you need
to know. Most of the time, people learn just by doing it. We all make mistakes,
and we learn from them.
The scope of this book is to help you, the new robot builder, get started in the
exciting field of constructing combat robots. After reading this book, you will
have an understanding of all the elements that go into building a bot. Usually, the
new robot builder is surprised to find out that there are so many different things
that go into this process. This is because most people only see the finished prod-
uct—the beautiful, gleaming El Diablo or Nightmare or Deadblow—they don’t
see the blood, sweat, and tears that went into building it.