The Infernolab::::Slugger

[photo: Adam Prentiss]

STORY: Christian Carlberg brought 3 of his cool robots to BattleBots in Long Beach in August 99, and he also designed and built the BattleBox arena traps. Unfortunately, his heavyweight Bad Boy didn't get finished. The torch was passed. I finished up the robot, renamed to Slugger, for the Nov 99 Las Vegas BattleBots event (shown on pay-per-view on Jan 29, 2000).

Slugger was planning on slugging his opponents by either high-speed spinning slugging or by overhead slugs with the slugging stick. We ran into a chain problem at the Vegas event--let's just say that we went through a lot of broken chains. You can see Slugger slugging away at the opposition in the heavyweight rumble from the BattleBots Pay-Per-View event.

SPECS: Slugger featured 2 huge powerful motors, 2 huge fat tires, a huge long stick with a huge ugly sharp whacking end, and a huge frame to hold all these bits together.

TECH DETAILS: Slugger was driven by 2 airplane engine starter motors (formerly used on Phil Putman's Bloodletter Jr.) that were controlled by relay packages. The motors' gearboxes are about twice the size of the motors themselves--they're geared down so far that, with a chain reduction to the wheels, the wheels spun way too slowly. So, Slugger ran with a speed increase from the gearboxes to the wheels. The huge puncture-resistant drive wheels were from an ATV. Armor plating was made from a hybrid carbon fiber/kevlar composite panel (high-tech Boeing prototype wing material that didn't pass the test for aerospace grade, but plenty beefy for a 210lb robot).

SPONSORS: Designed by and funded by Coolrobots.