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Name: Toe-Crusher
Class: 50 lb
Power: Electric
Weapon: Overhead spike
Sponsors: C2 Robotics, National Power Chair and Tires Unlimited
Status: Upgraded
A rolling robot. It placed second at the Arizona Bot Bash and fourth place at BattleBots 99. Expect to see a new Toe-Crusher at future events.
The Story of Toe-Crusher
I hate wedges.
It's not a secret. Sure, they are effective, but they are not that interesting. They are very proficient because
a) They use all their weight for the drive train and armor, and
b) They are low to the ground and can get under an opponent.
A lot of people believe you can't get do better than a wedge for simplicity and performance. I built Toe-Crusher to prove that you can improve on the wedge idea, making it more effective. Toe-Crusher was my innovation.
Like a wedge, Toe-Crusher's armor was designed in a wedge shape to scoop under its opponents. Like a wedge, most of Toe-Crusher's weight was poured into the drive train and batteries. However, I used the dynamics of the drive train to power an over-head pick axe weapon.
Here's how it works.
Take two very large wheels with a common axle and put a small motor between them. When you view this arrangement from the side all you see is a wheel (the motor is behind that wheel and the second wheel is just beyond the motor. Now if you turn the motor on, the motor will spin around and around while the wheels stay stationary. However, if you attach a very long stick to the spinning motor, the end of the stick will eventually smack the ground and the motor will no longer spin in place. If the motor is now stationary and running, the wheels will have no choice but to start spinning. If the motor reverses direction the stick will spin up around to the other side, smack the ground, and the wheels will turn in the opposite direction.
The trick to making this work is to put the wedge-shaped armor on a bearing system that allowed the guts of the robot to spin around. Unfortunately, Toe-Crusher fell a little short in this department. Instead of a full-blown wedge shell I used four wedge "feelers". In some case they worked well but in a couple cases they really got in the way.
I plan on redesigning Toe-Crusher to make better use of this concept. Still, it did very well at Long Beach, coming in fourth place.
I was competing undefeated until I went up against Ziggo. After our initial collision I thought I had him; my wedge feelers had flipped him and smoke was coming out of his shell. Ziggo got back on his wheels and started spinning up. I made haste to get over to him but he managed to stay clear of me until he was up to full speed. Nuts. We crashed ones, and then again. The last crash did a number on my wedge feelers, curling them up underneath my robot. Toe-Crusher's tires were still operational, but I was propped up on my own armor and could make contact with the floor!
Nuts.
Since it was double elimination I was still in it. I beat another competitor and then had to go right into a fight with The Executioner. Unfortunately, I did not get a full twenty minutes to swap out my batteries and it was heartbreaking to watch the fight as Toe-Crusher started petering out.
Rule of thumb; design a battery system that can be swapped out in one minute.
