Meltybrain is the name of a particular style of horizontal spinning battlebot where the entire robot spins on its drive wheels.
If you want to put the most energy possible in your spinner, you build a Meltybrain
This is down to physics, some simple and some tricky. First, the energy of a spinner:
Where I is rotational inertia, and ω is rotational velocity
If your looking to store more energy, the most obvious thing to increase is your rotation speed; it has a square relationship! Unfortunately, there is a limit to how fast you can go, and it's not just the max speed of your motor.
Bite
In battlebots there is a term called "Bite", which refers to how efficiently your weapon transfers energy to you opponent. You can think of it as difference between a weapon skipping off or slamming in. This match is great at showing both scenarios:
Strategies to improve byte
- Approach your opponent fast
- Aim for corners, avoid flat faces
- Reduce the number of teeth on your spinner
- Reduce the speed of your weapon
Yep, point 4 is what really limits our rotation speed. Most spinners can run at 10,000 RPM, but in reality only run up to 5,000 RPM.
So what now?
If we can't increase speed any more, rotational inertia is the only thing left. The equation for rotational inertia depends on the shape of the spinner. For the most common case, the spinning disk, it is:
Where m is mass and r is radius
While it's true that r has a square, in practice it all comes down to weight. The more mass you are willing to put in your spinner, the more inertia it holds. For most bots this becomes a tradeoff between spinner power and pretty much anything else.
And then there's meltybrain
If your spinner is your entire robot, there is no longer any tradeoff between spinner weight and things like armor, drive motors, batteries, etc. Any mass that protects your robot or makes it go faster also contributes to a more powerful spinner. This is why saying meltybrains are the most powerful spinners (in theory) is objectively true. They can hold the most energy without sacrificing bite.
Great, but how does it move forward?
This is the tricky bit. You still need to move laterally about the field, while it spins. To accomplish this, the simplest way is to pulse the power of your drive motors at just the right place every rotation. The aggregate is that the robot drifts in whatever direction you're pulsing. You only need one wheel to do this!
In order to pulse the motors at the right time, the robot needs to constantly know what direction it's facing. Robots can't know this without some kind of sensing element and a processor to crunch the numbers.
Sensors
Accelerometer
The accelerometer can be used to directly measure the speed of rotation by measuring the centripetal acceleration. The relationship is below:
Knowing the rotational speed, your robot can figure out it's direction by assuming "since I have been moving this fast for this long, i must have moved this far and am now pointed this direction." The catch is, every measurement has a small error. These errors build over time and cause the forward heading to drift. This can be corrected for by the driver, but the more drift, the harder it is.
Gyroscope
A gyroscope placed in the center of the robot can measure the speed of the robot indirectly by measuring changes in the speed. The processor can add up these changes to get speed. Because the gyroscope has an extra layer of indirection from the accelerometer, it generates more error. It can be used in conjunction with an accelerometer, however, to reduce the error caused by rotational acceleration.
Encoder
The encoder can be used to measure how much your wheel has rotated. This can be used to directly measure how far your robot has rotated. The main issue is any time your wheel slips, you generate error. Wheel slip happens any time blows are traded, or passively if the wheels are having trouble gripping the floor.
Light Beacon
If you put a light source on your controller (either LEDs or a laser pointer), and you point your light source at the robot, the robot can recieve the light source. Since the light is directional, the bot will only see the light when it is facing a particular direction. This can indicate to your bot where the forward direction is. This is an absolute reference, meaning it does not drift! the only catch is, light bounces. So get in the way of the wrong shiny surface and your sensor can still get false triggered.
If you're going to do this, i recommend using a modulated IR source and reciever. IR so that your rival driver doesn't get distracted (something safety staff look down upon), and modulated so that bright lights and flamethrowers don't false trigger your sensor.
Processing
Sensors are useless without something to read the data and crunch the numbers. Most bots use just an RC receiver module. This wont cut it for a meltybrain; you also need a controller that can run code. I wont call out specific modules here, because there are a lot of options. But some notes to consider:
The processor needs to be reasonably fast
If the robot is spinning at 5,000 RPM, it doesn't leave your processor much time to think. How fast your processor needs to be depends on what it's doing. The most minimal design can probably make do with 8MHz, but if you want to use advanced sensing solutions or flicker displays, think about getting a faster one.
It needs to survive being in a battlebot
smaller and lighter is better
Heading Indication
It's great if your robot knows which way is forward, but your driver needs to know too! The easiest way is to have an LED visible on your bot that blinks whenever your robot faces forward. Persistence of vision will cause you to see a streak on the forward side.
Code
I'll post my own code in a later post. For right now, OpenMelt is a great reference.