MowBee is our first attempt at an Antweight robot. We decided to build him after seeing the Antweight matches at SECRs Farm Fight. He got his name MowBee for a couple of reasons. First, it is similar to Moebius' nickname Mobi. Secondly, the drum is similar to those old push mowers. And thirdly, when he is spinning his drum he sounds like an angry bee.

We built MowBee to test an idea that I had for a weapon. The idea was to make a spinning drum type weapon but have the motors the spin the drum inside the drum. This would give us a couple of advantages. First, it cuts down on the complexity of the design, after all, I religiously follow the K.I.S.S. method of design. Secondly, the mass of the motors add directly to the spinning mass of the drum.

The real trick to the whole design was how to get current to the motors if the motor leads are buried inside the drum near the center. This was accomplished by using a double sided adhesive on the face of the motor and attaching a washer to it. Then we ran a single wire from that washer to the positive lead of that motor. That same lead was run in parallel to the negative lead of the other motor. The same thing was done on the other motor.

The double sided adhesive electrically isolated the motors so that they would not ground out to the drum. Then went positive voltage was applied to one washer and negative to the other the other the motors would spin in opposite directions but when laid end to end facing opposite of each other the shafts spun in the same direction. Now all we have to do is stop the shafts from spinning and then the drum will pin instead. Pretty cool, huh?

When MowBee was completed the drum weighed a full 8 ounces, half of the entire weight of the bot! Unfortunately, he was so front end heavy that in the debris laden box he just spun his wheels. Oh well, the idea is sound. Now, when we get around to building MowBee 2 he'll be something to deal with :-)