JuggerBot structural design is based around space frames and structural interdependency.
The internal steel combat chassis is designed to focus the brunt of the propulsion systems directly into the main battering ram while being reinforced by the drive frames and armor.
Each wheel is housed in its own formed and welded steel space frame, much like a modern unibody automobile. These frames serve several functions-
These frames, combined with the drive components, form Drive Modules. Each drive module is attached to the outside of the main combat chassis. All Drive Modules are interchangeable and self-contained, allowing rapid changeout of an entire Drive Module. Spare modules facilitate quick replacement of any damaged or failing component contained in a module.
The internal combat chassis is a box beam made from welded square tubing. Torsional stiffness about the horizontal axis is provided by the inner drive module mounting plates (when installed). Torsional stiffness about a vertical axis is provided by the upper and lower armor plates (when installed).
This setup is analogous to assembling a home entertainment center. After the walls and cross members have been connected, the structure is still wobbly. True rigidity is only attained after installation of a deceptively weak cardboard back panel


Propulsion is provided by a single direct-drive motor and sealed gearbox for each wheel. A conscious effort was made to avoid weak drive components like custom gearboxes, chains, belts or clutches. Motors are not excessively over-voltaged, so survivability and life expectancy over time is assured. Motors are connected to factory gearboxes, avoiding the pitfalls of building a gearbox and aligning gears.


JuggerBot has numerous hardmounts for external weapons. Additionally, alternate combat chassis designs enable internal weapons power bays with rotary and linear external PTO ports. Most weapons used on JuggerBot are passive, although semi-active and fully active weapons have been developed.


JuggerBot has a 10 channel on-board combat telemetry recorder, called a Fight Data Recorder or FDR. The FDR is connected to sensors (primarily thermal) on motors, controllers, and other critical areas. The data is stored in Onset HOBO miniature data recorders. After a combat, the data is downloaded for analysis. The data recorder is water, fire, and shock proof so investigative data can be gleaned posthumously in the event of a total catastrophe.

Here is the Excel telemetry graph for the last "event" at Robotica JuggerBot was involved in. I won't give anything away by saying where or when that event was or who it involved. The data is a little chunky right now, and I'm going to work on extracting better resolution.

Here's a sanitized excerpt from a report I sent our telemetry supplier, Onset.

Unfortunately, I forgot to record the actual times of the events for establishing exact start/stop times. So, most of my observations/conclusions are based on my memory of the event and my interpretations of the data.

This data is for the last event that JuggerBot competed in. We were running at ** Volts and were pretty much at or near full stall for much of the event.

The motors heated up rapidly and soaked so drastically that they required over an hour to cool down. The data is a little blocky- this is what I've seen in the past when the Hobos data loggers themselves heat up slightly (in this case due to the arena torches).

Looks to me like the Motor C channel had some issues, so I ignored that data in this run. Sitting on the elevated platform, the entire robot baseline seems to climb to around 99F thanks to the nearby pyro. Then, as the match commences, the motors start to heat up with A and B (the two front motors) doing much of the stall heating.

Somewhere around 2:30AM things cooled down for the controllers briefly, then spiked back up. This probably correlates to the parking lot rumble where we punched some gratuitous holes into Ram Force before both of us lost battery power.

From the data we can see that the controllers didn't really work up a sweat at ** Volts, which is fantastic news. They are heavier-duty ones that we swapped in the week before the competition. Without them, we wouldn't have been able to go to the power settings that we did.

More info to come.

Mike
TEAM LEAD
TEAM:JuggerBot


JuggerBot's design is based on tactical evaluation of almost every BattleBots/Robotwars/combat-bot image, video, description, etc available in the public domain. Each combat was assessed for tactical successes, failures, and outright blunders. Each robot was evaluated for strengths and weaknesses. Current tactical database exceeds 24 hours of video and 3,000 images.