every year there's a robot combat event in japan called robo-one that a few friends and I watch, and it gets us all hype to mess around with robots every time. unfortunately, it turns out that the (bipedal, anthropomorphic, extremely flexible) robots they use for robo-one are about $3,000 -- so in the robo-one afterglow I've been learning more about the sort of robots they use on battlebots and robot wars, which are way cheaper to get into (at least in light weight classes).
today I stumbled across the concept of translational drift aka "melty brain drive" -- accelerate your entire robot to a high rate of spin, and translate it across the arena by using a microcontroller and accelerometer to modulate the motor drive signals to briefly cut out when it's facing in the right direction:
extremely fun, bizarre idea and the firmware implementation the inventor released has a lot of extremely dire warnings in it.
// WARNING / DISCLAIMER:
// YOU MUST READ THIS!!!!
// This code is provided for your use without warranty
// It is not advertised as being for any specific use
// The author is making this code available for your intellectual curiosity
// If you should choose to attempt compiling / deploying it - you are placing your life in danger!
// Semi-autonomous systems can be extremely dangerous
// You should assume at any time the robot when powered may "spin-up" (even if not instructed to by the operator)
// and cause corresponding damage / injury / death.
// This may be caused by any number of errors in implementation - however - may have no apparent cause at all.
// THIS IS A REAL CONCERN - MOTOR "GLITCHES" HAVE BEEN OBSERVED ON SOME PLATFORMS DURING TESTING - THAT HAVE NEVER BEEN FULLY UNDERSTOOD / EXPLAINED
// In addition - this code may have "bugs" that may further endanger anyone attempting to utilize it
// A 1lbs spinning robot is likely capable of causing significant injury
// Larger robots may very plausibly kill someone.
// SPECIFICALLY - BUILDING A TRANSLATIONAL DRIFT ROBOT OVER 3 LBS IS ONE OF THE MORE DANGEROUS THINGS I CAN IMAGINE DOING
