Battle Robot Design

[Enrique Fats]

Onthe other hand 1 lb and 3 lb class combat robots are a manageable size and make competing more accessible. As luck would have it moving to the west coast has brought me closer to fellow enthusiasts and I have recently discovered small battle events not far away!**

Google: Battlebots + wiki and get The BattleBots Wikia which presents a detailed history of every battle and every bot in every year of the competition. On top of that gold mine I stumbled across the BattleBot fantasy league website.

The fantasy league was interesting because it sorted all the robots in the 2018 lineup into tiers of expected performance based on past performance. Fantasy leagues are for gambling after all, so this was an excellent way to look at an expert opinion. According to their data, these four robots below are the top contenders.

All other things being equal, the physical geometry of the robot is a major determining factor of the chance that they will strike or be struck by a critical hit. Robots are difficult to drive so an important question to think about is:

I color-coded the tier one bots to show what I mean: Green = Weapon, Yellow = Armor, Red = Vulnerability. When viewed through that lens it is easier to see how difficult it is for the robot driver thread the needle without getting pricked.

The robots and their weapons can take whatever form the designer wants with a few obvious limitations. Also, since BattleBots wants to stay in business all bots must have at least one active weapon because passive-wedge-only robots are boring to watch!

Given that design freedom many kinds of weapons have been used, but it seems that the serious contenders focus on using one of 3 weapon types really well. The remaining weapon types are more difficult to reliably win with so I classify them as novelties.

The remaining weapon types all require very specific conditions for them to have effective damage potential. While there are examples of these bots winning, these weapon designs are inherently difficult to successfully employ. These are the novelty weapons in decreasing order of effectiveness:

The rules allow you to switch weapons to prepare for a fight so clever teams bring a couple different weapon modules to adjust their bots as needed. But the fact that novelty weapons are difficult to use effectively is really important because:

Very good, a few other things: keep in mind the gyroscopic effect for powerful spinners, it can make turning extremely hard, and another key factor to winning is getting under people, like bite force does with the floor dragging wedges. if you get under someone with your weapon you will win all weapon to weapon exchanges.

In science fiction and real life, robot designs vary quite extensively, and rightly so as each design is meant to tackle a different task. A more common design is based on the human form: four limbed, bipedal, head on top etc.

But what would be the best design for an all purpose robot designed to replace military infantry? Humans are able to accomplish a wide array of tasks and yet I feel a robot designed to look human is quite limited. Should it even have limbs? How many? Should it have legs? Wheels? Both? How big should it be? Is human size too big? Too small?

Main sensors in the head, containing IR and optical sensors, ears are supersonic radar, similar to bats. A tail as an electronic whip for close combat and a smoke grenade launcher in the butt, to cover emergency evasive manoeuvers.

That's not the way military things are designed: think about general purpose airplanes, boats and submarines. Those projects are often too full of compromises and they're sub-optimal in every scenario. For each intended use (or, at best, for a family of uses) you need a specific design.

This may not be the answer you are looking for, but I'm convinced it will not look any like a human. An ideal military robot is bacteria-like. Very small, very deadly and present in very big numbers. It probably also should be able to propel itself, so it could move much faster than usual bacteria.

In practice it may be very hard to design something so small, that can move very fast. So in the end, it may be much bigger but still will remain similar. Imagine a small balls, almost not noticeable, but that can move very fast and kill in seconds. Maybe something like an AI-powered bullet or rocket?

If we assume we are not so much technically advanced, it will still be small, just bigger. The drones, that carry a firearm is a good example. Other option is something like a small spider that can jump very far and fast. I do not remember the movie name, but there was one (probably more than one) that showed one of such things.

But there is only one shape that can benefit fully from the environment shaped by humans, and that is the humanoid form, precisely for that reason:Everything around us is optimized for our form. Shelves and cupboards are where a humanoid can reach them easily. Any machinery you find is built for humans to operate.

And this is especially though in warfare: Every weapon is designed so a human can easily distinguish the right end from the wrong end, and use the trigger, reloading mechanisms and whatnot. So, if you want a generalist combat robot, give it a humanoid form, so he can ride in tanks and aircraft, use weapons that the opposing side spontaneously decided they won't need any more, and reach any places that humans can.

In order for our bots to be as efficient as possible and be usable in as many different environments as possible, we're probably not going to see any humanoid bots. The sole exception to that would be if we needed some sort of psychological edge, in which case, mounting our bots in child-mannequin bodies would be ideal.

Nightmare fuel not withstanding, first of all we need to look at mobility. The ideal combatant is one who can be deployed in a short time, in any terrain and through a wide variety of means. So we'll want them to be reasonably small and light. This helps both with transport and because they're small, they'll be harder to hit. In terms of surface area versus volume, we're going to want them to be as close to a sphere as possible, giving us a maximal volume to hide important components while providing a minimal surface that we need to slap armor on. Unfortunately, spheres are annoying to deal with and tend to roll around a lot so we'll probably see something closer to a dodecagon (which co-incidentally, also looks an awful lot like the angular shapes we see on radar-confusing vehicles)

Allright, so we're looking at bots that are probably somewhere between a football and a beachball in size. I think that in terms of weaponry and mobility, we should be following the example of the A-10 Warthog. That is: half of our bot is firepower, the other half is dedicated to getting it someplace where it can deploy said firepower. I'm thinking a number of small ion thrusters, set in different locations in the chassis.

As for weaponry, since we're dealing with warbots in the future, we're probably building them either with high-end coil or rail rifles, with the whole of the bot built off a miniature reactor or big-ass battery.

Speaking of weaponry, some of our bots are probably going to be intended for short-term engagements and should be equipped with a battery of dumb-fire rockets for harder targets.

The best soldier is that which you can't fight. Soldier of the future would either use the best camo available(which, in some distant future, might mean high % of invisibility), or simply won't be a single soldier(swarm of nanobots, some disease, or any other modern invention).

*NOTE: due to Battlebots being back on the air this instructable has been getting alot of traction. While much of the information here is still good, please know that quite a bit has changed in the sport in the last 15 years*

Combat robots have been entertaining and amusing since before they were popular on Comedy Central. A while back I undertook the challenge of building a couple of combat robots (a 30lb and a 220lb). Regardless of the size of the machine the steps in the process are the same. This Instructable will walk you through the steps and provide you with resources to help with the machine and give an understanding of what is involved using my 30lb robot as an example.

Combat robots come in many sizes from 75grams to 340lbs each one of them has their pros and cons. The first thing to do when thinking about building is to find the competition which you want to compete and see what weight classes are going to be there, because what is the point of building a bot you can never fight. Listing of robotic competitions are available on and

Large robots: 60lbs +

There is nothing like the thrill of seeing two large machines hitting each other with the force of a small car wreck. When most people think of combat robots it is these larger machines which first cross your mind. If you are fortunate to live near one of the large robotic events these machines can be fun builds, but at the same time the level of engineering required can be quite difficult. These large machines can also cost quite a bit of money. When you commit to building a machine this size you are committing at least $1000, and in many cases much more. I would estimate that your average heavy weight (220lbs) would cost a builder $4000-$5000 to build a competitive machine, and it is not uncommon to see builders spend upwards of $15,000+ on their machines over the course of a few years. In the days when combat robotics was televised there were many sponsorship opportunities which would subsidize the cost, unfortunately now as a builder you will be on your own.

On the good side of larger machines is that many times you can find surplus parts online which can reduce the cost of the machine. Using off the shelf components such as items from or can help make things easier. There are more of these components available for larger machines. Those Larger machines also have the added ability for service, fixing a machine is much easier the larger it is. Building a large robot can be both fun and enjoyable and you wont regret being able to say "I have a 120 lb battlebot in my garage"

Small Robot:

Building a small robot can be a lot of fun but also a good challenge, with a restricted weight limit it makes every part on the machine to be critically thought about and designed. Most people are drawn to these smaller machines because of the frequency of competitions for them as well as the ability to transport them easily. While it is the common misconception that small robots are cheap they can be just as expensive as their larger counterparts. Alot of times the small electronics required for these can cost quite a bit as compared to larger components.

weight classes (list from wikipedia):

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