1998: In the beginning...
...we were soft on the inside, and crunchy on the outside.
Take three engineers and one pile of scrap metal,
The reason we got into this mess was Owen's fault, since an offhand comment led him to commit to building a remote-controlled box on wheels. We applied to enter Robot Wars shortly after the end of the first series. He asked two of his colleagues at Lucas Aerospace to join the team - Mike and Liz. None of us had had anything to do with remote control before. Mike came the closest to that, as he is an electronics engineer; Owen and Liz are both mechanical engineers.
The name for the robot was originally 'Armourdillo', but someone else had already bagged that one, so after a flash of inspiration, the Haardvark was born.
Scooters-R-Us
Through a network of contacts we were given a scrap three-wheel scooter, with the motors and gearboxes still attached, but only the one wheel. One gearbox had a broken drive axle, and the other one had a wheel seized onto its axle. Short work with an angle-grinder got the wheel off, but we still had only one good gearbox. A quick measuring job, producing a drawing on CAD at work (in our lunch-break of course), and two new axles were made by the lads on the shop floor. In the end, they did quite a lot of work for us - shafts and bearing blocks - so we owed them quite a lot of beer.
Our original design for the general shape of the robot was discarded when we decided to use the chassis of the scooter. This particular scooter was capable of carrying a 19-stone person, as well as its own weight. Also the mounting points for the gearboxes and motors were already in place, along with a very convenient battery compartment. Out came the angle grinder again to remove the bits of chassis that we didn't need, such as the seat post.
Big Batteries
Then we made what was probably our biggest mistake: We bought two 24 Amp-hour batteries, weighing in at a meaty 9 Kg each. Together they took up almost a quarter of the robot's final weight. But we thought we needed that much power. By the time we realised that we could be using four 7 Amp-hour batteries (at a total of 10 Kg), it was too late to exchange them. A good rummage around the skips at work revealed a great deal of scrap metal: lightweight Aluminium I-beams, sheet steel and aluminium, dexion steel, and much more. Consequently the Haardvark's chassis is built entirely from scrap material. we spent the money on electronics and the weapons systems. Amongst the more interesting things we managed to acquire from friends and family was a 30 feet long roll of Kevlar material.
Big Money
Because the three of us all worked for the same company, we thought we'd try and get some sponsorship. We asked and we got it, to the tune of £1,000. This enabled us to buy the remote control system (at £200), the gears for the weapons systems gearboxes (at just over £300), the wheels (£50) and the batteries (£70). The rest of the money soon became absorbed as time went on. We bought 200 M6 nuts, and almost ran out.
Big Ideas
Mike designed and built his own fully proportional motor drive system so that the robot would have maximum controllability. After a few teething troubles, he got it to work. Then we added weight to the robot and suddenly the circuitry stopped working. Curious.
The Plan comes together...
Don't ya just love it when a plan comes together? This photo was taken the day before filming. We weighed the robot and it was substantially over the 80kg limit, so the saw had to be removed. Hence the expression on Owen's face. There is no armour on Haardvark because there was none to put on. It was put on later that night, at about 3am, and we had to get up at 6 to drive to London for the filming!
By this time, we had managed to get the robot to move under remote control, but each time we did, after 20 seconds the circuitry would start smoking and all control would be lost.
So we went to the filming with a non-functional robot...
