Mostly for safety reasons, the Antweight Rules disallow a number of potential ideas for weaponry. These restrictions currently forbid:
- Any Un-Tethered Projectiles
- The use of pressurised gas over 100psi (7 Bar)
- Fluid based weapons (water, treacle guns, etc..)
- Glue or sticky pad weapons
- String or entanglement weapons
- Flame based weapons
- The use of electricity as a weapon
- Explosives based weapons
- Rotating weapons which may shatter (scalpel blades are permitted)
The restrictions are carefully thought out, meaning that no weapon should be unfair on the opponent or endanger you or your fellow roboteers.
Popular Antweight Weapons
Despite the above restrictions, the rules allow for plenty of scope and imagination when it comes to designing weapons for your Antweights. Many inventive weapons have been seen over the years, but below are some ideas to get you started.
- Pushing Power - Arguably should not really appear on this page as pusher does not really have a separate weapon, rather the whole robot is the weapon. Pushers are very successful in Antweights, partly because they are simple and can be easily made so there are many of them about, but mostly because of the 50% drop off rule. This means that only 50% of the arena is walled, the other half is open. This means that there is a big advantage for pushing robots because they are able to just shove their opponent out of the arena.
- Axes - Not the most powerful of weapons but they can be very easy to implement. Axes can simply be a rod glued to the end of an unmodified servo with a scalpel blade on the end. The main problem with axes is they are limited in power due to the recoil created when the axe fires. The more powerful that axe, the greater the recoil. Antweights are tiny and do not weigh much, therefore they cannot cope with much recoil from an axe.
- Flippers - A couple of CO2 flippers have appeared in Antweights but most are arms of some sort glued to unmodified servos to provide a lifting mechanism. To increase the speed of the flipper, some Antweights use a lever mechanism to accelerate the arm. This method can provide the flipper with more lift and speed than a normal servo could provide.
- Crushers - Not as effective in Antweights as in heavyweight robots, however many crushers have still appeared, including our very own Bobblebot. Unfortunately, crushers are severely restricted by the small weight and size limits of Antweights and most turn into grabbers rather than true crushers. Crusher are also quite challenging to build and get operating effectively and reliably.
- Spinning Disks/Drums - Highly destructive, but difficult to get working in the first place. Spinners also very often knock themselves out of the arena as they are very light to start of with, but when a 50 gram disk hits another 150 gram object, then both of them are going to go flying. Despite this problem, some of the most successful Antweights have been spinners.
More weapons have been seen in the Antweight World Series but these are the most common ones. Some robots are looking at sucker technology to anchor themselves to the floor to stop them from being pushed out. This is still quite a new idea so the technology is still very much in its infancy.
