In the hope of deterring participants from turning up armed with flamethrowers or circular saws, the organizers have tightened up the rules of the first RoboWars, held last year as one of Lucid's lustrum activities. “For safety reasons, we state that no one may bring their own materials. We provide metal, wood, motors, and controllers. And some eighty rescue robots produced during this past academic year at Engineering Design,” says Mechanical Engineering student Max van Haren, secretary of the committee, which this year includes members of Simon Stevin.

Perhaps it is not too late to trawl the scrapheap of the Bachelor College's basic course for wheels or drive motors. And it may be possible to print what cannot be found using the 3D printers the organizers are procuring.

This year the arena, in the form of a Plexiglas cage, is located in Gemini. “There is more space there than in Laplace, where RoboWars was held last year. The space was a little cramped back then for the seventy-five participants, and we are hoping for even more participants this year.” All of Eindhoven's students, including those at Fontys, are welcome to sign up as of this week for 50 euros per team.

Catching some shuteye

New insight has prompted the organizers to change one of the rules of play. “The weight limit has been increased. Last year the robot could be 1.5 kilos maximum. As a result, participants stopped making improvements as soon as their machine worked, in an effort to avoid it going over the limit. Now the maximum is set at 3 kilogram.”

The biggest change, however, is that the second edition of RoboWars is not a 24-hour makeathon, but a two-day event. For both the organizers and the participants, building and testing robots in a 24-hour period proved to be very tiring. This year work can continue until 11.30 p.m., but after that the premises will close so that everyone can get some much needed sleep. For early birds, work can be resumed the next morning at 8 a.m., after breakfasting in Gemini.

RoboWars is naturally all about the destructive final, open to everyone to visit on Sunday between 15:30 and 18:00 hrs. But in order to check how quick and how maneuverable the fighting machines are, two interim challenges will be held. “The drag race on the Saturday is definite,” says Van Haren. “This will get the groups to focus first of all on making a moving prototype. On the Sunday there will probably be a football match, but that hasn't been finalized. The aim of the challenges is to test functions that will be useful during the fight.”

Photo | Bart van Overbeeke