hey everybody norm here with tested at Maker Faire Bay Area 2019 I'm in a cage
here with with Tony Tony you guys run a mech warfare League tell me about this
these robots you build at least this combat that you do so mech warfare is
meant to be an urban combat environment where you pilot your robot from a
first-person point of view so there's a little camera at the end of this and
when the pilots are fighting the matches all they can see is what the robot sees
through this camera and they're simulcast on some monitors that we have
over there but you know you have target plates you have four target plates you
start out with 20 points at the beginning of the round and then whoever
has the most points at the end wins and usually it's like a shootout these are
airsoft rifles and we just take the automatic electronic gun out of an
airsoft rifle and flip it upside down and then at the bottom there's like a
hopper and it just pushes the bb's up through this into the gun I love that
these robots are using a lot of off-the-shelf components as the base
platforms you know fpv racing gives you your low latency video these robots are
on like a mechanized platform that I'm assume are pretty standardized right
yeah these are just Dyna mixels these are the a x12 a lot of the people have
you know stronger dynamic CIL's in this but in our rookie league I mean in a x12
is good enough and then of course the airsoft comes off of an automatic
airsoft these are the electronic ones not in your cast power yeah they're the
aegs they're the electronic ones yes and then that means that you don't need to
actually destroy the robots it actually is about hitting a target so it's fun to
me again how the plates work so you can only shoot at 200 psi that's the maximum
so you're really just shooting at the plates to score points and so when you
hit the plate a point comes off there's actually a cool-down period because they
wanted to make sure that people are going around and you know moving and not
just sniping the other players some of the guns have a pretty long range this
one can shoot almost all of the across arena but in the in the other league and
the veteran League there's definitely people that can shoot across the arena
so they wanted to make sure that you know you can't just stand there and
shoot your there's a 1 second cooldown if you get
it once and then if you hit it twice it's two seconds things like that so it
forces you to move around and shoot multiple target plates to win so it's
totally less about destruction and a more about the creativity of how you
design your mat and my target plates all you know stick on the sides there's
definitely some people that have them lower some people that have them higher
I've seen people like you know make their robot really tall so then you have
to you know aim up I see a bunch of a 3d printed components here what type of
custom fabrication yet to do and where do the robots vary in terms of their
design and aesthetics this club design was started by Dawn Croft he's here
today too and so the walking gait was developed by Dawn but then the actual
parts like a lot of these come from robotics and then these ax twelves you
order them and then these black pieces these are heat sinks so the a x12 is
probably aren't supposed to you know run around the way we do and so we heat sink
them with aluminum so that it pulls the heat away from the servos so your robot
doesn't overheat and then these pieces this piece right here is cut out it's a
laser cut and then the rest of this is 3d printed a guy named David Fogg on my
team he um designed these and then I just 3d printed them as they break the
thing that breaks the most on this robot is the feet and so I just 3d print more
feet and put them on here and of course there's a whole rewrite here which is
awesome it's like it it's scaled so the robust live in a world cuz you're
watching them for a PV it looks massive in that perspective
retina from the FEV it looks really cool because it does it really does feel like
you're walking through the city and a lot of the veterans I hope I'm not
giving away too many spoilers but like they're when they come they really
practice walking around the arena so they can get a feel for it and you'll
see some really smooth matches in the veterans league people will just run
across the arena and look for the other person and it it definitely feels a
little bit like battleships some of these buildings you can shoot between
them like if you see these little alleyways here if you're a good shot you
can line up your shot between the buildings and so that's how I win
sometimes is I hide behind the building and shoot between them the video game
brought to life now you guys are based out of Tucson here in Bay Area where can
people get involved find out more join the mech warfare league so there's
a website it's called our team robotics I believe it's our team robotics at
weebly.com or our team Bharat robotics boo boo calm that's what I'm saying
and there's also at rawson Electronics forum and there's a mech warfare blog on
there and you can see what we're gonna be doing for Maker Faire if we come
again next year and what we do in Tucson sometimes in the fall in Tucson we have
a fall mech brawl and so a lot of us from Tucson we all fight each other and
sometimes people fly into the Tucson mech for all and fight us - that's so
cool we'll have more information all below thank you so much Tony
congratulations I heard you won with your rear bot Domino I won the rookie
league which was a very proud moment for me because a lot of the other guys in
the Robotics Club you know they've been fighting for a long time and I've only
been fighting for three years and so it's almost like getting beat up by your
big brothers all the time and then you finally win yourself so so it's it's
been a fun a fun match they're willing to watch as well it's pleasure to meet
you and a good luck in next series