Combat Robot

In my final year as an undergraduate, I decided to undertake a solo project to build my own 3 lb combat robot with Combat Robotics at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) at UCLA. Only 1 other robot was built by a single person, and this organization provided us and all of the teams with any needed electronics, funding, and guidance. Over the course of the academic year, I designed, prototyped, and manufactured the final robot in anticipation of our yearly tournament, SoCal Smackdown.

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When it came time to weigh in under the limit, my robot was recorded at exactly 3.00 lbs. At that point, I was confident my preparation had paid off. I fought my way to the finals, but ultimately came in at 2nd place due to an electronic fault out of my control. I did win the award for the best looking bot, however.

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My biggest lessons ​from this experience came with my effort to manufacture the unibody chassis. CNC milled on both sides out of a ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMW PE) block, the entire design hinged on manufacturability. This placed design constraints on the heights and depths of every feature, any internal radii, and the overall geometric complexity of the single part. They say measure twice, cut once, but with only a single block of material to work with, I measured a lot more than that.