Team BeligerAnt's Tech Talk

Antweight Arena

Here are some pictures of my antweight arena. It has been designed to be flexible in the way the walls and drop-offs are arranged. It will hopefully show what can be done within the current "50% drop-off" rule, and also allow evaluation of any proposed alternatives.

The walls are made in sections and bolted to the base. Many configurations are possible. The current walls are approximately 45mm high. I will try to make some shorter walls to see what effect wall height has.

The arena is easy to transport and is available for any event which we are able to attend, or which we can get the arena to someone who is attending.

Update July 2005: There is now a battlebox for this arena. It has been designed to be independent from the arena. In this way people can build arenas without necessarily having a battlebox. Like the arena, the battlebox is easy to transport and is available for any event which we are able to attend.

	An unusual layout, with two corners, two short walls, and four drop-offs.
	I think this is one of my favourite layouts. No corners to hide in (or get stuck in!).
	A layout with four corner drop-offs. The inverse of this would be possible, with short corner walls and large drop-offs in the middle of each side.
	The arena has now received its paint-job. The coloured corners are an attempt to make it easier to identify robots in a fight. If an announcement is made at the beginning of the fight about which robot is starting in which corner, spectators get a chance to figure out which robot is which. Smilarly, video titles could make identification of robots easier by referring to corner colours.

Because of the modular design, other layouts are possible, including the straightforward two opposite sides walled (Like Peter Waller's arena), or two adjacent sides walled (like PeteC's arena).

Battlebox

	The battlebox assembled and ready for use. The door is on the left hand side in this picture. It slides up in runners to allow access to the arena from one side. The battlebox roof is high enough to allow reasonable access to the far side of the arena to retrieve dead robots.
	The battlebox can be flat-packed for storage and transportation. It packs down to about 1200 x 600 x 120 mm. Most of the battlebox simply slots together. There are just eight nuts and bolts to fit, and six of those hold the two halves of the roof together!
	The base of the battlebox has four blocks to locate the arena in the centre. The blocks are placed so that their outer edges form a 725mm square. The blocks are 38mm tall. In this way, an arena 765mm (30") square with up to 15mm thick supports around the edge will fit over the blocks with some allowance for the battlebox and/or arena being slightly out of square.