Actual Size: Difference between revisions
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With a substantial 6 month break between the MIT event and driver [[Max Morningstar]]'s next planned competition of the June 2025 NHRL event, Morningstar had an opportunity to do an extensive redesign of Actual Size. This redesign focused on three things: Actual Size's bigwheels, the weapon stack, and the ever-present challenge of connecting the two halves of Actual Size's chassis. |
With a substantial 6 month break between the MIT event and driver [[Max Morningstar]]'s next planned competition of the June 2025 NHRL event, Morningstar had an opportunity to do an extensive redesign of Actual Size. This redesign focused on three things: Actual Size's bigwheels, the weapon stack, and the ever-present challenge of connecting the two halves of Actual Size's chassis. |
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It is worth briefly pausing to speak about the 12lb robot [[SLAM PLAN]]. Driven by [[Brendan Steele]], SLAM PLAN had an incredibly dominant 2024 season, winning Motorama, the October NHRL event, and the NHRL Championships. Seeking to replicate this success (while simultaneously being wary of the "cargo cult" phenomenon that can quickly creep into combat robot design), Morningstar selectively incorporated certain elements of SLAM PLAN's design into Actual Size. These elements included |
It is worth briefly pausing to speak about the 12lb robot [[SLAM PLAN]]. Driven by [[Brendan Steele]], SLAM PLAN had an incredibly dominant 2024 season, winning Motorama, the October NHRL event, and the NHRL Championships. Seeking to replicate this success (while simultaneously being wary of the "cargo cult" phenomenon that can quickly creep into combat robot design), Morningstar selectively incorporated certain elements of SLAM PLAN's design into Actual Size. These elements included using a hollow weapon shaft to run the whole robot off of one electrical system, making the weapon gear driven instead of belt driven, and having two chassis configurations to allow for "stanced" wheels when fighting horizontal spinners. |
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'''All following sections are WIP''' |
'''All following sections are WIP''' |
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Revision as of 14:09, 17 September 2025
Robot Facts
| Builder/Driver | Max Morningstar |
|---|---|
| Team | TRC |
| Weight Class | 3lb |
| Body Material | TPU Chassis |
| Weapon | Vertical Spinner (AR500) |
| Weapon Drive | TBD |
| Drive | Repeat Drive Max from Repeat Robotics |
| Power | 3S Lipo |
| NHRL record | 1-2 |
| Lifetime record | 3-4 |
Overview
Actual Size is a bigwheel vertical spinner robot built by Max Morningstar. Coming off of an educational but competitively lackluster 2024 season with his bigwheel horizontal spinner Jot, Morningstar sought to take some of the experience gained from Jot and translate those hard-won design lessons into a more traditional (and far more competitively viable) bigwheel design.
Actual Size's first design debuted in December 2024 at the MIT CRC House Battle and finished a respectable 2-2. Sporting a hubmotor weapon and repurposed wheels from Morningstar's January 2024 version of Jot, the design was given the designation V0 because it lacked many of the trademarks of subsequent iterations.
Actual Size V1, which competed in the June 2025 NHRL event, would borrow multiple design elements from the highly successful 12lb bigwheel SLAM PLAN. Most notably, Actual Size V1 sported a hollow weapon shaft that allowed the whole robot to run on a single electrical system, ran its primary weapon with gears instead of belts, and had an optional "stanced" configuration to aid in taking on opponents with horizontal weapons. Actual Size V1 also marked the debut of Morningstar's signature "composite bigwheels", which blend 3D printed TPU with spring steel cleats in order to offer superior traction and durability over more traditional UHMW bigwheel designs. The V1 iteration earned Morningstar a solid knockout win over opponent Reflex, but held some glaring design flaws that revealed themselves in tough losses versus Pipeline Punch and TurboFIEND.
Actual Size V2, debuting at the Barnyard Buzz Brawl 2025 event, saw Actual Size swap away from a hollow weapon shaft but lean further into SLAM PLAN's all-or-nothing style of bigwheel design by fully exposing both drive motors. The composite bigwheels will be returning, redesigned to be even larger in diameter, as will the stanced configuration.
Actual Size's name and angry eyes are both references to HUGE, the robot that pioneered the modern bigwheel vertical spinner design. The name itself comes from the song She's Actual Size by alt rock group They Might Be Giants. Morningstar prefers the live version of the song, which he grew up listening to on CD with his family. That version of the song can be found on YouTube here.
Fight History
MIT CRC House Battle - December 2024
Actual Size debuted at the inaugural MIT CRC House Battle, an event hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Combat Robotics Club. Fresh off of competing with Jot at the October 2024 NHRL event, builder and driver Max Morningstar had only a few weeks to turn around a design for a then-unnamed 3lb bigwheel robot with a vertically spinning weapon.
In addition to the time constraints he faced, Morningstar (who had rather spontaneously decided to attend the MIT event) was low on cash and so designed the robot to be as cheap to produce as possible. To accomplish this, the robot was designed almost entirely out of 3D printed TPU, with the only metal components being the weapon blade and two aluminum side plates onto which the drive motors and wheels mounted. The exception to this was the UHMW bigwheels, though here too Morningstar was able to save money. The bigwheels that Actual Size used at the MIT event were actually the exact wheels that Jot had fought with in the January 2024 NHRL event, albeit with refurbished cleats and being driven by gears instead of axle-mounted on the drive motors.
The decision to reuse January Jot's wheels was as much driven by cost as by frustration. One of the biggest recurring failure points on Jot's several iterations were the wheels, so rather than try and develop a new design Morningstar chose to instead use the only wheels he had on hand that had proven their durability in combat. This simplified the challenge of designing the new robot considerably.
While the chassis and wheel designs were able to be crafted directly off of the lessons learned from Jot, one new challenge that Morningstar had to surmount was the issue of powering the vertical spinning weapon and securing the two chassis halves of the robot. For this, Morningstar looked to his other 2024 beetleweight robot, Lemon Vinaigrette, which had used the RDY-5536 Hubmotor from Just Cuz Robotics in the September 2024 NHRL event. Morningstar had been impressed by the hubmotor's ease of use and effectiveness, and saw the motor as a way to seamlessly integrate a weapon system into the robot that could also act as an anchor between the two chassis halves. With the RDY-5536 selected, Morningstar was able to complete what he referred to as the "V0" design of Actual Size, assemble the robot, and eagerly set off to his seventh and final combat robotics competition of 2024.
Actual Size vs Flycut
By random chance, Actual Size was one of four robots selected to fight in Round 1 of the MIT event's double elimination bracket. This smaller round (necessitated by the number of competitors in the tournament) would see Actual Size pitted against the 2WD vertical spinner robot Flycut. However, Flycut was unable to be ready in time for the fight and so Actual Size picked up its first win of the day by forfeit, advancing into Round 2 of the Winner's Bracket.
Actual Size vs Basics
Actual Size's first real fight of the day was against the fearsome 2WD drum robot Basics, from Donald Sung of Team Pandamonium. The fight began with a series of weapon-on-weapon hits, as Donald kept his drum firmly pointed and Actual Size and Morningstar, attempting to snipe the drum's belt, obliged by driving into the weapon repeatedly. This exchanges were fairly even until a particularly nasty exchange shattered the magnets in Actual Size's hubmotor, killing its weapon. The repeated strikes also ending up caused a solder connection to break on one of Actual Size's drive sides, meaning that it had only a single wheel active. With half drive nonfunctional and no weapon, Actual Size tapped out, taking its first loss of the day and dropping into the Loser's bracket.
This fight would end up being pivotal for future Actual Size iterations. The fight gave Morningstar two key insights: firstly that as a driver he wanted to be able to confidently go weapon on weapon with opposing bots, and secondly that a bigwheel hubmotor would not be conducive to this driving style. The logic behind this was that the additional energy of an oversized bigwheel blade, which are generally larger in diameter than most vertical weapons, stopping suddenly (as often occurs during hard weapon-on-weapon strikes) meant that there was a good probability of such a magnet-shattering failure occurring again in the future. Actual Size would never again run with a hubmotor weapon. The fight is also significant because it marked the first fight of what would come to be a budding rivalry between Actual Size and the robots of Team Pandamonium.
Actual Size vs Power Outlet
Actual Size's third match of the day was against Power Outlet, a newly built robot designed by a member of MIT's Combat Robotics Club. Actual Size had been seemingly fully repaired after its fight with Basics, and both robots made it to the arena, but Power Outlet was unable to turn on due to unknown electrical issues. As a result, Actual Size took its second forfeit win of the day and advanced to Round 3 of the Loser's Bracket.
Actual Size vs Hat Trick
Actual Size's fourth fight of the day was against Hat Trick, a classic midcutter horizontal. Morningstar was excited for the fight, since it marked an opportunity to gather data around how Actual Size's bigwheels performed against a horizontal. Heartbreakingly, upon reaching the arena it became clear that half of Actual Size's electronics were nonfunctional, and that Actual Size's weapon and half of its drive were once again disabled. Not wanting to give up a chance to fight, Morningstar chose to run the match anyway, limping Actual Size around the box as it was knocked around by Hat Trick. Despite its wheels holding up fairly well against the horizontal, eventually the solder joints on the functioning drive side also failed and Actual Size was counted out for the KO. The loss to Hat Trick pushed Actual Size out of the loser's bracket and ended its first event, with Actual Size leaving having achieved an even record of 2-2.
NHRL June 2025
With a substantial 6 month break between the MIT event and driver Max Morningstar's next planned competition of the June 2025 NHRL event, Morningstar had an opportunity to do an extensive redesign of Actual Size. This redesign focused on three things: Actual Size's bigwheels, the weapon stack, and the ever-present challenge of connecting the two halves of Actual Size's chassis.
It is worth briefly pausing to speak about the 12lb robot SLAM PLAN. Driven by Brendan Steele, SLAM PLAN had an incredibly dominant 2024 season, winning Motorama, the October NHRL event, and the NHRL Championships. Seeking to replicate this success (while simultaneously being wary of the "cargo cult" phenomenon that can quickly creep into combat robot design), Morningstar selectively incorporated certain elements of SLAM PLAN's design into Actual Size. These elements included using a hollow weapon shaft to run the whole robot off of one electrical system, making the weapon gear driven instead of belt driven, and having two chassis configurations to allow for "stanced" wheels when fighting horizontal spinners.
All following sections are WIP
In an effort to reduce redundant electronics
All following sections are WIP
Actual Size vs Reflex
Actual Size vs Pipeline Punch
Actual Size vs TurboFIEND
- 2 ranked 3lb robot
Rumble: Chonkiv vs Everybody
Statistics
Info
- Rank: #76 in 3lb.
- Last 5 fights: WWWWL
- Current streak: L1 (0 KOs/KO'd)
- Longest winning streak: 4 (2 KOs)
- Longest losing streak: 2 (2 KO'd)
- Avg fight time (seconds): 106.0
Record
| Year | Events | Fights | W | L | % | KOs | KO'd |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | |||||||
| 2020 | |||||||
| 2021 | |||||||
| 2022 | |||||||
| 2023 | |||||||
| 2024 | |||||||
| 2025 | 2 | 8 | 5 | 3 | 0.625 | 3 | 2 |
| All-Time | 2 | 8 | 5 | 3 | 0.625 | 3 | 0 |
Events
| Date | Fought as | Reached | Place | Fights | W | L | KOs | KO'd |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 7, 2025 | Actual Size | Prelims Rd. 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | |
| November 1, 2025 | Actual Size | Quarterfinals | 5 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
Opponents
| Opponent | Fights | W | L | KOs | KO'd | Last Meeting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jet Lag | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | November 1, 2025 |
| Drumder Child | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | November 1, 2025 |
| Reflex | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | June 7, 2025 |
| Chaos Upright | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | November 1, 2025 |
| Dimachaerus | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | November 1, 2025 |
| Pipeline Punch | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | June 7, 2025 |
| TurboFIEND | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | June 7, 2025 |
| Project LiftOff | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | November 1, 2025 |
Click "Expand" to see this table.
Full Fight History
* Forfeits before the 2024 season are not counted in a bot's W-L record. Forfeits from 2024 and on are counted in a bot's W-L record.
For more information on how points are calculated for rankings, click here.
Click "Expand" to see this table.
Select Fights
Video links coming soon!
