Emsee Fry Pants

I created a new fighting robot thanks to my dad and my friend Joe. It's called Emsee Fry Pants, which is an homage to the robot MC Pee Pants since they're similar and was part of the reason that the robot ended up as it did. If you don't know, MC Pee Pants is also a character on the cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force (ATHF). I took it to an event this Saturday in Gilroy and placed second out of sixteen. I lost my second fight against Rebel, then fought through the losers bracket to face the winner of the winners bracket. I beat him, but it turned out to be normal double elimination instead of modified double elimination (what's usually done since the losers bracket has to fight more fights). So I rematched Lethal Wedgie for the championship and got stuck on his wedge and pushed out of the arena. I'm glad I've done so well with Fry Pants at this event though. It's much more fun to drive than all of the other iterations of FryBot combined since it's decently fast and has a weapon.

Emsee Fry Pants "Attacking" FryBot

A few things I learned at the event which made the robot do better towards the end than the beginning was that I should tighten all of the screws before every round, and make sure that there's some kind of agent to keep them tight during the fight (like superglue/loctite/etc). Through the event, the endcap screws were getting looser and looser, and by the second rebel fight, one started to come out (it had been making some noise when it spun up like it was off balance or something). Tightening those screws made it sound like normal and do a little better :). Also, during the first and second matches the bolts/screws that were used for teeth came loose and started hitting the ground when the drum was spun up. They were still attached because of the lock nuts they were screwed in to, but it was enough "damage" that caused me to lose my second fight (the first against rebel). Between rounds Joe put some quick-drying epoxy that he brought with him on the teeth and then screwed and tightened them in and the teeth coming out ceased to be a problem for the rest of the event. The final thing that I learned was that I could safely turn the drum up to full speed. During the second match with rebel, and the two matches with lethal wedgie at the end of the event, I ran Fry Pants with the weapon motor at full and the trim all the way up. Previous to this, I was only turning it up to around 3/4 speed and trim at the bottom. This helped a lot since it was able to throw Rebel upside down in the second fight, whereas only knock him in the air a little the first. Likewise, it tore up Lethal Wedgie's lid pretty bad, and it made him cut a new lid out (at least that's what it looked like from where I was standing).