Terror Australis I & II Robot Wars Page

This page has some large pictures... click on the thumbnails if you want to see the real thing.

If you don't know what Robot Wars is, check out their web pages. There are similar competitions like Battlebots. Also have a look at Robot Combat Links.

In 1999 I (Peter) found out about Robot Wars through a Professor at our university. As soon as I had read the rules I was hooked... I had to be there. I managed to convince one person in the class I was teaching to help me (that was Rodney). I also convince Nick, a collegue of mine, to help (he didn't need much convincing). So, in June 1999 three unsuspecting guys (that's us - mugshots coming soon) by the names of Nick, Rodney and Peter (me) endeavoured to enter the International Robot Wars competition to be held in London later this year. We had some great design ideas which were mostly discarded due to their complexity and our sever time constraints (the filming was supposed to start at the end of August). We finally decided that the best way would be a petrol powered beast using a lawnmower engine....

To cut a long story short, here is the final result...

The robot is powered by a 4hp 160cc Victa lawnmower engine. It uses ring gears with cut down Mazda 323 rims as wheels. The rubber on the wheels are cut-down car tires. The chassis of the robot is welded from 20mm RHS steel. The covers are 1mm steel plate with the important areas covered by another 2mm steel plate or by 1mm thick aircraft titanium. The budget for this robot was basically 0 but it ended up costing about $400 to build (primarily do to the bearings in the transmission). The robot has the same steering as a bobcat. Each set of wheels (each side) can go forwards, backwards or stop.

Some more photos

Before the Australian Robot Wars show went to air on Channel 9 on November 29, 1999 there were a number of press releases. Some photos of the us, the robot and Jo Phillips (one of the Australian presenters on the show) were in TV Week and other TV type magazines. Here is a photo that was taken when the publicity shots were made. Thank you to the person who "modified" the picture... (Rafy). Sorry to Jo... couldn't help putting this picture here.

Trying to fix a few things (this photo was taken by the Razer team)

The Irish team... thanks!

Painting Terror Australis II (or Rodney) minutes before we are supposed to go on stage

The dutch robot after a "collision" with Razer

More coming soon...

Here is the story of our trip to London to attend the competition

The story is somewhat long... but here it is

This is the robot we had to borrow from the Irish team (Thanks again)

Thank you to all those who helped us while in London!

It was a pleasure to meet so many helpful people at the UK competition. In particular we would like the thank the Irish team, Furry Nemesis. Without their help (as you can imagine from the above story) we would have been out of the comp alltogether.

Here are some webpages of the great teams we met while in the UK. If you are not on this list it doesn't mean you weren't great people... I just havn't got your web addresses :-)
Furry Nemesis (the Irish) - the old site no longer exists... does anyone have an update?
Razer
Firestorm
101
Hypnodisk

Our Experiences and Recommendations

Based on having had the experience of building a robot for Robot Wars I have the following suggestions to anyone wanting to get involved in the Austrailian competition (hopefully run by Channel 9).

e-mail Channel 9 and tell them that your interested in Robot Wars and can't wait for the Australian competition to start

Here are some hints and tips that I/we will be using to build my next robot

Do NOT use a petrol engine for driving. The advantages (like for power for less fuel or batteries) are far less than any disadvantages (like noise, dirt, grease). I would only use a petrol engine if I had access to a well outfitted machine shop and could build/acquire a proper transmission with a good clutch and good gears.

If you use a microprocessor between your RC receiver and your servos/motors then make sure it can decifer the servo pulses that are very noisy.

Make your robot reliable! Do not cut corners. In the ring, there are so many forces and things acting on your robot that anything dodgy that you did will break. This will cost you the competition!

Don't be too concerned with armour plating your whole robot. Weapons of other robots such as axes or spikes are generally inaccurate and not particularly powerful. Some axes out there are very good however. But you have to make sacrifices somewhere on your robot to remain within the weight limit. Armour plating that has some sort of impact resistance is worthwhile, for example, two aluminium plates with hardwood in between.

Saws tend to be ineffective and you have to worry about whether the saw blade is tipped or not.

A lot of the competition depends on your driving skill and how fast your robot can manouver. However, this is no reason to put all your efforts into the driving chassis of your robot and not into the weapon. An EFFECTIVE weapon is VERY important.

Build your robot so that it can either right itself after it has been flipped or run upside down. A lot of robots are still becoming disabled because they get flipped upside down (or out of the ring :-)

Do lots of reading on other people's web pages. Most teams who have web pages have a hints section such as this one.

Other things... I'll add them as they come to mind

By the way, the background and the Terror Australis logo that is shown on this page is printed on one of our team T-shirts... just in case you were wondering.

Updated January 2000 Peter Aigner