Offensive Measures

Offensive measures are things in the design of your robot used to attack or disable other competitors robots often taking a form of active weapon. The exception being pushing which uses the drive motors as the actuator. = Considerations = Offensive measures are probably the most interesting and difficult part of a fighting robot's design and essential if you don't want to leave your chances of victory to the mistakes of others.

When choosing an offensive weapon it's important to consider how effective it's going to be. For example a falling spike seems like fantastically cool weapon. However if you can't get tremendous force behind it, it will probably glance off most robots that use metal plating.

Another important aspect is repeatability, if you design your weapon such that it can only be used once you run a very high risk of being without a weapon for the majority of the competition.

Most fighting robots will contain one of the following weapons as they have proved to be successful in the past and all can be used multiple times.

= Damaging weapons =
 * Falling weapons
 * Ramning weapons
 * Rotational weapons

= Manipulating weapons =
 * Lifters and Flippers
 * Gripping and Caging
 * Pushing

= Actuators used for weapons =
 * Brushed DC Motor
 * Brushless DC Motor
 * Servo Motor
 * Pneumatics