Mech Warfare and other comparable competitions

[ember3579]

Hello. If you have absolutely no idea what Mech Warfare is, go to this website. That's the official website of the competition. It's fairly new, and it's first run will be at Robogames 2009, in Fort Mason, San Francisco on June 12-14. Here's a few of the rules.

 

 

 

1) The mechs must be piloted in first person, meaning you have to have a camera mounted on it and ONLY view the fight from that perspective. I think that some radar systems are allowed, though. The purpose of this is to simulate the experience of actually piloting the mech you're using.

 

 

 

2) The mechs must use a walking system to move, with a min-max leg count of 2-4.

 

 

 

3) The mechs have a maximum weight of 5 Kg. I suspect that this is to both make them unable to do major damage to a human and help keep the necessary arena size to a minimum. There's no restrictions on how big you can make it, aside from the fact that the ceiling is 4' in the air and the "streets" are around 2-4' wide (this might be incorrect, tell me if you find anything on this).

 

 

 

4) The mechs CAN use an autonomous system to fight. All that is required in addition to the normal stuff is an operable kill-switch. To quote the people who wrote the rules page; "I won't have Skynet go live on my watch."

 

 

 

5) You have a limited weapons selection, which is mostly relaxed when you go from the "soft core" competition to the "hard core" competition. The only universal restrictions that I can see are no explosives and no liquid, chemical, or electricity weapons.

 

 

 

6) The way that the victor is decided in both match types is by a health point system. The mechs must have a target plate (3" diameter, I think) attached to the mech for each leg it has. These must be placed on reasonable areas of the mech. The amount of hp that mechs are going to have in either competition type is still being decided, but a good guess is at least 10. The most hp that can be lost in a second is 1, although if you're knocked over you will take some damage as well. Even more will be applied if you can't right yourself.

 

 

 

These are the basic rules that you should know. You can find a more comprehensive list on the official site, as well as some discussion about them on the official forums. I highly recommend that you join the OF, if for no other reason than the help that they can provide. If you want to talk with me, I'm Alucard on those forums.

 

 

 

What do you think about this contest, and other similar ones? Personally, I'm very interested in it. The things that this could help develop are mind-boggling. I imagine that when it gets in gear, the military might be interested in what these people can do for them. You can also give some ideas for various things in this contest, as well as some pointers. Any and all help/questions are appreciated!

[pryomancer]

Mind is blown, this is awesome. Reminds me of a hardcore Robot Wars. Damn I loved that programme.

[ember3579]

Mind is blown, this is awesome. Reminds me of a hardcore Robot Wars. Damn I loved that programme.

 

 

 

 

 

Biggest differences between that and this are 1) Robot Wars rarely has any walkers, whereas this is exclusively walkers, 2) Robot Wars doesn't really have first person support, whereas this has it mandatory (unless if it's autonomous), and 3) this (at least for the moment) doesn't have a focus of destroying the bots, whereas Robot Wars does. Still, it's pretty freaking sweet. I was grinning from ear to ear when I read about this in Robot (www.botmag.com). Can't wait until we can get into more heavy duty robots. :twisted:

[pryomancer]

But does it have Craig Charles? :

 

 

 

Really though, this is really interesting, I'm really looking forward to seeing what designs people come up with.