HAMster Ball: Self-righting joke robot

Another HAM robot, this time for Motorama 2014.

It was originally supposed to be a sphere but I got tired of cutting foam, so I just made the center part and put a hefty chunk of steel in the middle as ballast. An aluminum tube ran through the center to keep it rigid.

You can see it in the middle. It weighed almost two pounds.

The robot used two fasteners total (set screw for each wheel). Carpet tape and fiber back strapping tape was the primary fastener. Most of the frame was scrap half-inch foamboard (stiff paper backed foam). It used a couple of gold sparks, the 33.3:1 variant.

A tail told you which direction was front.

Due to a complete lack of pushing power or other method of attacking, HAMster Ball only competed in two matches at Moto. The first one was against a Weta kitbot which didn't have much weapon range, so it did nothing.

The second match was against a robot with a proper weapon, so it showed off its self-righting ability before getting popped in half.

While I hoped it could have gone against a vertical bar robot, the fact it was able to show off the buoying action was good enough.