Please note, these are pretty much the exact notes I wrote in 2003 with only minor edits and as such the spelling and grammar is likely to be consistent with that of a 13 year old!
Initial Thoughts
My Antweight was always going to have a crusher on it because I liked them so much. I thought about a design like Razer's with 4 wheel drive however I soon realised it would be too heavy so I thought that it would be good if I could use elements of razer with my own design. I recognised that one of Razer's strong points is its ability to get underneath its opponent. I then began to think up several designs and eventually came up with the idea of using a diamond shaped chassis with two wheels and a crusher at the back and a razer style ramp at the front.
I decided that if I could get the ramp low enough to the ground then I would have quite an effective little ant. I began about building it early 2003 when I saw the Robotwars101.org site and visited their shop. They had an "Antweight Robot Starter Kit" for sale for £140 or so. I thought it would be ideal for my ant and that with another fully modified servo it would work well. I began saving my money to buy the kit and while I was doing that I decided to research ants a bit better. I explored the Antweights section of robotwars101.org and quickly realised that they are a lot harder to build than they first look...
Final Idea
After a bit of research I realised that some of the ideas that I had at first would of been totally out of the question. I began to realise also that despite their small size ants are no less as destructive as the heavyweights on TV. My initial idea of an ant with a paper body shell would probably lasted about 5 seconds at an Antweight World Series or other competition. I also began to realise just how powerful servos are and how much power a crusher could have. I found the Close Shave (an ant with a crusher) website and saw how much effort an ant needs to build.
