Battle Karts - The Bumble Bee

Battle Karts - The Bumble Bee

Dalton Vassallo and Andrew Todd Marcus

When we first started our project, we were going to make Mario Karts and have a balloon battle. We were going to outfit them with bananas, turtle shells, and other classic Mario Kart projectiles. However, David challenged us to make our own original carts. From the start, we decided to split into two sub-groups. Dalton and I decided to group together and we immediately decided that we wanted to make a rocket theamed cart. Because creating a perfect cylinder would be hard to achieve, we decided to go with an octagonal design. We decided to use eight panels that interlock like a puzzle to create an octagonal body. We then sealed off either end of the body using two solid octagonal pieces. We then put tail fins and an octagonal nose on to make it look more like a "cartoonish" rocket. We 3-D printed mounts for the motorized and non-motorized wheels that would attach to the bottom. After assembling all of the the parts and porgramming and attaching the electronics, we focused on the weapons. We decided to use two remote control servos that control wings with thumb tack points on the ends. This was to be our main weapon. In addition, we mounted a large acrylic spike to the tip of our nose, and wooden spikes to the sides of the body. After our first test drive we were impressed with our turning and and nose manual capabilities. However, our rear wheel mounts were definetely flawed, but after some hard work using hot glue and screws, we got those squared away. Our next problem came from our motors, one was working fine but the other one was not moving or responding to the remote control at all. After a lot of tests, we were stumped, then when we thoght it couldn't get any more confusing, the motor that was working stopped working and the broken one began working fine. So we called David over, and after a thorough investigation we found that when the motor was pushed too far into the mount it would stop working because either the wires were pinched or the motor itself was too pinched. After fixing that problem we had servo problems, but after some re-mounting and edits to the program, we had those working perfectly. Then we had more motor problems, one only ran forward and one only ran backward. After taking a look at the program we found some errors and made some changes and finallly had our electrical components working fine. Last but not least, we had to mount the balloons. We quickly designed and laser cut some mounts and glued them to the front and back of the car. All in all our project came our great and I am confident we will be successful in our battle aginst the other cart.