Mobility, Protection, and Armament

The RoboticUnit team represented Samara University at the international "Battle of Robots" competition. Approximately 150 applications were submitted to participate, but only 64 teams were admitted to the qualifying stage, including the team from the Robotic Club.

The arena of the second qualifying stage, held in the "Patriot" park near Moscow, witnessed a battle of technologies: engineering teams from Russia, Brazil, and India presented their machines. In the up to 110 kg category, the robot's task was to survive one round for three minutes without losing mobility.

"Battle of Robots is an incredibly cool event! In the process of developing the machine, you solve non-trivial engineering tasks. In addition, importantly, until the robot rolls out into the arena, you don't know what it might face. The battles reveal problems in the design that you weren't even aware of at the start of development," noted team captain Evgeny Gan. "But the most important thing is the atmosphere of communication with amazingly interesting and smart guys. For instance, our opponents discussed design features with us after the second battle and shared their experience."

The Samara robot started confidently, winning the first round. Although the second bout did not end in its favor, the students gained invaluable experience in designing and building a more protected and technologically advanced "fighter."

"This time, we managed good protection and weaponry. But literally, the Achilles' heel was the wheel drive. That is, our entire wheel system turned out to be very weak. As it turned out, we had technical solutions that other teams had used before, but a very, very long time ago, which we couldn't have known about. And these solutions, unfortunately, reduced our speed and mobility. In the second round, half of the wheels failed, and the robot didn't respond to the operator's commands. But I must note that no matter how hard the opponent's robot hit us in the second round – and the stated impact force of its hammer was one ton (!) – we only saw a couple of dents on our robot's body, and that was all," commented Evgeny Gan on the course of the battles.

Work on the new robot was carried out mainly by students from the "Wings of Rostec" program of the Institute of Engine and Power Plant Engineering, as well as students from the Advanced Aerospace Engineering School. The team consisted of Evgeny Gan (captain), Roman Konnov, Alexey Tarasov, Vyacheslav Lebedev, and Stepan Grigoriev. The students were advised by university teachers Dmitry Idrisov, Valery Balyakin, and Ekaterina Nosova. Development was carried out with the support of the university's strategic partner PJSC "ODK-Kuznetsov": engineers acted as experts, materials from the enterprise were used in production, and the machine was designed as part of the students' work at the enterprise.

We look forward to seeing the team in the arena next year with new ideas, an upgraded robot, and even better results!

Text by Alexandra Semyonova

Photos provided by participants of the Robotic Club