Last weekend we went to the University of Houston to participate in the Cougar Combat Cup. We decided to take 6 robots to this event – which might seem excessive because… well… it is. But there was a method to our madness.
We’re still trying to figure out combat robotics so we figured taking 6 bots was a great way to pack a whole lot of learning into one day. We were right about that – we learned a ton. But driving that many bots sure made this a very hectic day for us.
Our little robot army consisted of 2 antweights, 2 plastic antweights, and 2 sportsman fairyweights. Coach and Chase both drove one bot in each of those divisions.
The two plastic antweights worked pretty well and showed a lot of potential. It was only potential though. It didn’t take long for both bots to get destroyed.
Coach’s antweight and sportsman fairyweight bots both went out pretty early. As we’ve said before, he’s not a very good driver. On the positive side, his antweight went out spectacularly after being completely dismantled by a bot called Triple Nickel Express (as you can see in the video below).
So let’s focus on the positive part of the day – Chase’s robots.
If we’re being completely honest, it’s tough to tell the Sportsman Fairyweights apart because they all look more or less the same. In that division it’s not legal to have an active weapon so they are pretty much all flipper bots.
The major highlight for us in this division is that we got to battle against mini-Subzero. That’s right – Logan from Subzero built a 150 gram replica of the bot you’ve seen dominate on the BattleBots tv show. It is every bit as awesome as it sounds.
Amazingly, Chase was able to flip mini-Subzero into the pit to win that match! Logan really embodies everything that makes combat robotics great and we were so blessed to get to hang out with him at this tournament.
Chase ended up winning his first five fairyweight matches of the day but had to settle for 2nd place after losing in the championship match to a bot called Cream Cheese.
Our experience in the antweight division was pretty straightforward too.
Chase started off with a win against a Synthwave kit bot named Overkill. After that he was able to beat an egg beater bot called Bangarang twice and lost to a scalar bot called Peregrine twice to take 2nd place – very consistent. 🤣
Both of our matches with Bangarang were ridiculously close and their whole team was so gracious about it the entire time. That was a theme throughout this tournament for us. Everyone we interacted with – both competitors and volunteers – were amazing and reminded us why we love combat robotics.
We had a lot of success at this tournament and took home two 2nd place trophies. But much more importantly, we learned a lot of ways we can make our robots even better.
For the plastic bots, Chase is going to make the chassis sturdier and move the weapon forward so it doesn’t bounce back and destroy itself on impact.
For the Antweight, our only loss was to a horizontal spinner. So he is going to come up with a horizontal configuration to try and fix that.
With those changes, we feel like we’re going to be very tough to beat next time we’re in the battle box!!!
