Chonkii

Introduction

This robot had a name before a design. It born when Brian thought to himself, "Hey, it would be really funny if we named a robot Chonki and made it really, really big..." Throughout the design process the robot lived up to its name. Chonki is a 45lb shuffling shell spinner competing in the 30lb weight class. It was developed during 2020-2021. The drive system was iterated from that of Apachi. The weapon system was a brand new concept for BattleBots. The goal of Chonki was to evaluate the viability of shell spinners while taking advantage of the 1.5 time weight multiplier afforded by using a mechanism other than wheels for movement. Has not been to competition due to COVID cancellation, but showed promise during development.

Members:

• Brian Epstein (Lead)
• Dylan Fife (Mentor)
• Mihir Nagaraj
• Mesum Zaidi
• Emily Liu
• Janie Edgar
• Celina Huang
• Martha Leach
• Cole Sosnowski
• Colin Lyman

Drive System

Chonki utilizes a shuffler system for drive. It consists of two shuffler modules, each with 4 HDPE feet. The feet sit on two parallel, octagonal cam shafts. These allowed for the four feet to be positioned 90 degrees from each other, so feet would always be in contact with the ground through the cam shaft's rotation. To fit inside the feet get smaller as they move away from the chassis. The longer feet have chamfers to clear the rollers and support which they sit under. The cams have offset octagonal holes to accommodate the shafts and sit inside circular cutouts in the feet, which keep them parallel with the ground as it walks. The use of the shuffling system allowed Chonki a weight bonus, bringing the max weight to 45 lbs.