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From Cockpit

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Obstacle course

Battle cars was conceived as part of my senior thesis project while attending Southern Illinois University. Before arriving at the final battlecars concept, I experimented with some other small models and evaluating ways that they could interact. I modeled my work in CAD software to develop ideas for the style and function. Part of the concept was derived from a "sport" growing in popularity at the time- laser tag. The idea behind these cars was to have two toys that would interact using electronics.

The cars would battle each other using infrared beams to 'fire' upon each other. Upon a successful hit, the victim's vehicle would light up with multiple high visibility LEDS. Additionally, a sound effect would signal each successful hit and each fired shot. After receiving 5 "hits", a vehicle would produce a surrender alarm and would lose the match.
I liked the concept well enough all by itself, but to take things one step further, I wanted to create the vehicles with different characteristics that could be used for varied strategies. I designed two cars and named them the Scorpion, and the Juggernaut. The Scorpion was so named for its overhead, fixed IR cannon. This cannon would fire a beam directly ahead of the vehicle's path. The advantage to this vehicle was its high speed and manouverability.

The Juggernaut was a truly unique vehicle. Utilizing a single central differential located at the pivoting chassis of the vehicle- the Juggernaut was able to supply power to all 6 wheels in unison. This arrangement provided superior traction and climbing power. The front wheels would pivot car style in the opposite direction of the rear wheels. This made for a great crawling type of drive. The whole chassis is free to pivot in the center over 45 degrees. This allows for some truly amazing climbing feats- even stairs twice it's height are able to be overcome by this innovative mechanism. Unwilling to stop there, I added a turret to the juggernaut that pivoted a full 360 degrees in proportion to a knob that I retrofitted the transmitter unit with (by replacing the traditional stick control).

Model boats, planes, and other climbing type of vehicles were considered.

I liked the split chassis concept, and began to focus my efforts at bringing that idea to reality.

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Drive testing

The turret was calibrated to be facing an angle proportional to the position of the dial on the transmitter. To add to that functionality, I added a tiny color CCD camera to the juggernaut and mounted the remote head unit on the camera inside the turret. I then installed a video link transmitter so that a first person perspective could be experienced. The video signal could be received by any ordinary television set for a range of a half mile (unobstructed). This allowed both long distance remote operation and quick targeting of an opponent by virtue of the swinging turret. I felt this would be necessary to make up for its slow speed, and high-torque gearing. My interest in 'Battlecars' turned out to be a bit of an ironic forshadowing of my growing interest in robots. Eventually, it led to my most intersting (and most expensive) hobby of battlebots.

Microcamera