Bramhaputra
A Battle-bot
Collaborators
Achal Dixit, CSE Dept, Indian Institute of Information Technology Guwahati, India
Ashish Mishra, CSE Dept, Indian Institute of Information Technology Guwahati, India
Me, Achal Dixit, and Ashish Mishra, a team of three participated at the International Robowars Event @ TechFest, IIT Bombay in 2019. Bramhaputra was probably the first major project that I did in my life. We were college freshers back then and didn't even know the 'R' of robotics. And that's why we were a bit hesitant about participating since we knew that we'll be facing opponents from across the continent who have immense experience in the domain. But we looked at it as an opportunity to learn robotics and meet brilliant minds in this domain. Hence, without a delay, we assembled a team and started preparing the proposal for the project.
We started preparing for the contest way back in around September. Since we didn't have any experience in this domain, we used to spend hours watching videos of Battlebots, the famous tv series, trying to figure out which bot design was most robust, powerful, and fast. During the exploration phase, we were pretty much convinced that most of the opponents we will be facing will probably be drum spinner types, and to secure a victory over them we need something different. Soon we came across The Son of Wayachi, its unique design was perfect to fight almost any kind of opponent. the unique thing in its design was that its weapon not only acted as its offense but also its defense. Almost all kinds of robots are very vulnerable to sideways impacts and hence Son of Wayachy was a tough enemy for them to beat without losing a wheel or two. Since this was very unique, very effective against all kinds of opponents and it was a champion at the Battlebots, We decided to go with a similar design. We named it Bramhaputra after the 2nd longest river in the world.
The Son of Wayachi at the Battelbots-2019
The Son of Wayachi in it's natural habitat
The bot had a top-rotor design with high agility and tough steel armor. The rotor on top was equipped with three hammers which spun at a high RPM. For mobility, we used 4 aluminum wheels, two on each side powered by high-torque DC motors. To power the top rotary hammer assembly, we used an e-bike motor. We used a 6-channel Flysky remote controller to control the robot. An Arduino nano was used to read the output signals of the receiver and to control all the motor drivers. All the electronics sat on a custom PCB that we designed. All the high-current components (like motors for wheels and rotary hammer assembly) were powered by 4 Li-PO batteries, and all the control electronics were powered by a separate smaller Li-PO battery.
CAD Models
Final Design
