Robot Warriors

Robot Warriors is the tentative name of a new television series that I and my good friend Brian Nave of Team LOGICOM are both hosts of along with Chris Chianelli who already has his own show on the network, Radio Control Hobbies. The show is like a cross between Junkyard Wars and US FIRST. The show pits two teams of college students against each other in a race to build a robot to perform a specific task and they have eight hours in which to do it. And add to that they fact that they can only use parts found in the studio and they have to incorporate at least one component of a surprise object into the finished bot. In the event of a tie the bot that uses the most components of the surprise object will win. Brian and I are the technical experts on the show, he works with one team and I work with the other.

We shot the pilot episode and Jon Autry took lots of pictures for us. My team was from the University of Tennessee and Brian's team was from Virginia Tech. The objective was to build a bot that would autonomously find and extinguish a small fire. But, there was a large barrier between the bot and the fire so the bot would not be able to detect the fire until it got around the obstacle. And, the surprise object was an old IBM Dot Matrix printer. It was quite a challenge because we were doing it on the set of Warehouse Warriors and only had woodworking tools and very small electronics to build a large bot (something bigger that 5" x 5" x 5").

The Virginia Tech team won with a great low tech solution to the problem. The UT Team was still having electrical issues at the end. But it was great experience and everyone had a blast doing it.

Here's me before the start of the day. Wish I still had this much energy 13 hours later as we started wrapping up :-p	Brian chilling in the Green room	Brian checking out Va Tech's progress
Awwww, look at how cute and little that thing is :-)	This is where the Director was located and where he would shout commands over the wall to all of us.	There's me working on some of the soldering for the UT Cobra (our nickname for it) with Jason and Jason.
Man, I gotta get me one of those butane soldering irons! Those things are friggin' handy!	Here I am working on the code for the Basic Stamp micro controller. The guy on the left is an EE who works for the studio and the guy next to him is a professor from UT.	The UT team talking to Chris about the bot
Now, THAT'S a robot!	Jason measures the angle of deflection for the fire extinguisher.	Say what?
Chris and Jon Autry. Thanks for all these great pictures, Jon!!!!	Brian and the Va Tech team relaxing with a finished bot.	And here it is, the Virgina Blow Hard :-) So named by Chris because it holds the inflated glove out at a distance from the wall equal to the distance to the flame. It hugs the wall and rides along it until it get to the flame. The flame bursts the glove and the rapidly expanding air blows out the fire. Absolutely ingenious!
Everyone running for their lives and lungs after the cobra fires.	The dry chemicals were so thick in the air that the light had problems penetrating it.	Because we used the linear bearing and the printer head we were able to wave the nozzle back and forth and cover everything to make sure that the fire went out.
A wider look at the after math.	And from another angle.	Brian trying to get some breathable air.