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1. In a 60 team double-elimination tournament, divided into preliminary hours and a final hour, the maximum number of bouts any team will compete in is 12. If every single one of those 12 bouts runs the maximum time for a bout (2 minutes), that means that your battery will be turned on a total of 24 minutes. If you have new batteries at the start of the bout that are fully charged, there should be no problem with their being able to run for 24 minutes, especially since they will not be 24 consecutive minutes. If you bring one set of spare batteries, each set of batteries would have to operate for a maximum of 12 minutes. Its much more likely that the total amount of time your battery will be turned on will be between 8 and 10 minutes - most teams in the tournaments I've run have not had to use their spare batteries. I would also expect that any tournament that has over 20 teams competing would have preliminary hours and finals, as trying to run a double-elimination tournament with more than 20 teams in an hour would be difficult to do (we run two rings at a time in New York to insure that we are finished with preliminary rounds in an hour, and that is difficult to keep track of. With more than 20 teams in an hour, you would have to run at least 3 rings, and would probably run 4 rings at a time just to insure that you finish on time, and I don't believe that any tournament would be able to supply the room or the personnel to run that many rings at one time.) The reason that their are no charging facilities available is that most places that can hold the event (usually gyms or auditoriums) will not have enough electrical outlets to allow all the teams competing during a particular hour to run chargers. If everyone cannot do it, then no one can do it - fair is fair.

2. Competitors are not allowed to work on their bot before their first match, as that would not be fair to the teams that are matched up in the first bout of the hour (they wouldn't have a chance to work on their bots before their first bout, but all of the other teams would). As stated in Competition, Section s., competitors MAY work on their bots between matches. They may start to work on their bot as soon as their bout is completed and the bots are released by the judges. If they are still working on their bot when they are called for their next bout, they will have 90 seconds to finish their work and report with their bot to the ring. As the tournament goes forward and the number of teams competing is reduced, the amount of time between bouts will get less and less.

Our bot needs new batteries after every run, will there be enough time to replace them and how many batteries would we need? Could we bring a battery powered charger and recharge our batteries with that? The rules mention only that the only batteries that can be impounded are spares for the bot, but there is no mention of impounding tools, spare parts, etc. Can we have a tool box and must it be impounded or can we just bring our tools, parts, chargers etc. at bout time?

old wrote:Our bot needs new batteries after every run

I think that instead of trying to accommodate that, you might need to try and fix that.

Ditto. You either have an incredibly power-hungry bot or (more likely) really bad batteries. As Mr. Boyd said, you will NOT be allowed to recharge your batteries between rounds, so if you can't get some better batteries you are going to have to impound a whole bunch of spares.

What kind of batteries are you using, if I may ask?

I'm having the same problem
My bot needs new batteries after every two runs, right now I'm just using 6 aa batteries
I was looking into lipo and others but inorder to get enough spares it would be hundreds so for now I'm going to stick with aa's but probably get rechargeable liion ones
If the rules are the same as last year it said that charging stations will not always be available, so essentially it says not to plan on it, however if you wanted to bring a car battery and use that to recharge it would technically be allowed, under last years rules
Man... When I the rules going to get to Texas

harryk wrote:I'm having the same problem
My bot needs new batteries after every two runs, right now I'm just using 6 aa batteries

Well, there's your problem. First of all, AAs usually don't have much amp-hourage anyway. But the big problem is that you're using alkaline batteries. Alkaline batteries have an interesting property, which is that the more you use them, the lower the voltage gets. A normal AA will start out at around 1.6 volts, but as soon as you use it the voltage starts decreasing. If your bot requires the nominal 1.5 volts per cell, then it's not going to last long before you get undervolted. Definitely use some kind of rechargeable battery. The most common nowadays is lithium ion. There's a good reason to use LiPo if you need lower internal resistance, but they can get pretty expensive (from what I hear; I've never actually gone shopping for any). Also, you should know that the voltage limit this year is the same as last year, 14.4 volts. So that's 12 Li-ion cells. But I recommend that you get a 14.4 volt battery pack, for the sake of mass and size. That is, as long as your system can handle that voltage.

EDIT: What kind of wattage does your bot draw during a match?

The rules regarding no recharging stations being available for students were in force last year (Competition, #4). In New York, we've clarified that no recharging facilities would be available since 2007, and in 4 C Division State Competitions, 2 B Division State Competitions, and 1 National Tournament Competition, I've never had a team that had to forfeit a bout because their batteries were dead. As Flavoflav and ichaelm have said, if you need to change batteries after running a maximum of 2 minutes (or 4 minutes in harryk's case), then there is either something very wrong with your robot or your batteries.

The rules restricting the impounded batteries to those that can be used to power the bot were added to the rules last year. A car battery cannot be used to power your bot (it would be way too heavy) and therefore cannot be impounded.

As with all other events in SO that require an impound, everything that you might need to use (extra parts, tools, etc.) must be included in the impound. You are not allowed to bring anything with you when you report for the competition.

JBoyd-NY wrote: The rules restricting the impounded batteries to those that can be used to power the bot were added to the rules last year. A car battery cannot be used to power your bot (it would be way too heavy) and therefore cannot be impounded.

As with all other events in SO that require an impound, everything that you might need to use (extra parts, tools, etc.) must be included in the impound. You are not allowed to bring anything with you when you report for the competition.

I'm saying that you could use a car battery to recharge your robot batteries, it would not go directly on your robot and therefore does not need to be weighed
And anyway, last year at nationals they were very lenient about impound, My remote turned out to be illegal and so I searched for a new one in town but unfortunately didn't find anything, but I still showed up five minutes before competition and they let me compete with my crippled robot, anyway it was proctored very badly there

*and so nobody asks how to charge batteries form a car battery, I'm referring to a power station thing that has a car battery built into a plastic case and a cigarette lighter socket like you'd find in a car

You're not allowed to bring any batteries, except spares for your robot.

The thing is, you are saying your batteries run out after 2 minutes of load. That is either a problem with your robot or a problem with your batteries. In your case, the problem is that you're using 6 alkaline cells. Fix that problem, and you won't need to worry about recharging after every match.

And also, as a general rule, don't carry around lead-acid batteries with you and set them up in a public place where someone could accidentally trip over it or something. When lead acid batteries go bad, they go really really bad.

As ichaelm said, you can only impound batteries that can be used to operate your bot. As I said earlier, you may not bring anything to the actual competition, so it would be impossible to use a car battery (you cannot impound it and you cannot bring it with you to competition).

As far as impound at last year's Nationals, it was a trial event, and we were lenient so that everyone who came with a bot would have an opportunity to compete. That leniency disappears this year, as Sumo Bots is a real event. This year, once impound is closed, you will not be allowed to bring in anything else. If you don't have all of the equipment you need at impound, you will have to compete with what you impounded. If you don't have the proper equipment at impound, you will have to compete in the second tier, as defined by this year's rules. For example, we allowed teams that did not have all three frequencies to try to find the additional frequencies they needed before their competition hour. At Nationals this year, if you do not have the crystals or the transmitter/receiver that allows your bot to operate on at least three different frequencies at impound, you will only be allowed to compete against other teams that have also failed to meet construction requirements, and you will only be allowed to compete during the preliminary hour designated for teams that have illegal bots.

As I stated before, this year Sumo is a real event - please don't assume that rules about anything, including impound, will be bent as they were for a trial event.