Any members into battle bots?

[A.K. Boomer]

been watching it on tv and it is kinda addicting and the thought did occur to me just how much machining goes into some of these units,,,

and it kinda is like they say - you see a few episodes and it makes you want to build one of your own...

has any members here made an attempt ? lot's of engineering types here who just so happen to have the equipment too - come to think of it most of us are set up pretty good for this...

im thinking instead of just building a model that sits on a shelf most of it's life this would be something a little more tangible... maybe not last as long but at least go out in a bang...

[danlb]

I've been to a few of the competitions, but only as a spectator. I've not been to the battle bots show, but they do the same thing at the Robot Olympics. They are a blast to watch. It's amazing how much force they allow to be exerted by the bots. Seeing a 500 pound machine launched into the plastic window 8 feet from your seat is exciting to say the least.

The last one I went to had to be delayed when a 30 pound part was launched into the overhead rigging. Parts of the supports were left dangling. The down side? They zip tied the metal supports back in place.

Every time I watch one I think of making a bot.

Dan

[J Tiers]

That used to be on TV like 15 years ago.

I figured that was long long gone.

[A.K. Boomer]

Yeah I remember that - these unit's seem to be allot better built now - they are more refined and some have multiple arsenal's

no doubt Dan that must be crazy --- they announce the weight sometimes and it puts it in perspective as you have to remind yourself when watching it on tv as they have a tendency to look like little toys.

one of the units had a spinning drum with catches machined into it - the drum itself weighed 70 lbs! and spun at a fair RPM rating --- that's how you launch 100's of lbs into the air like it was styrofoam lol

[Mike Amick]

Love it ...

its a bit like rock .. paper ... scissors

no one weapon .. is better than all the others.

they have flippers, spinners, hammer'ers, grippers. One seems to do better
against another .. but not others.

I do favor the low heavy tank like drum spinners though.

I believe the ones with all the scary appendages (hammers grippers etc) are at a
disadvantage.

[A.K. Boomer]

Some you have to wonder what the guy was thinking --- someone actually tried to build this extremely intricate almost human like structure with all these exposed pulleys and cables and it had a flimsy little sword and a shield --- OMG the amount of time this guy had in it - just for it to never get a hit in and get mangled and then set on fire lol

[danlb]

Yeah, a lot of folks put a lot of time and effort into the bot, only to find that the drive belt snaps when the spinning weapon is run into a solid mass at full speed. The ones that look good appear to be appealing to the producers just to get air time. Bots like Tentomushi (a bot with a silly looking lady bug or crab carapace ) are mainly for show and only win through strange failures of their opponents.

The more successful ones show signs of some serious engineering. You can tell the amateurs by the evil looking weapons that move at only a few feet per second, or by the aluminum or plastic shields that are gone after the first hit. You can tell the semi-pros by the way they have armored their bots appropriately, weld when needed and have weapons that move or spin fast enough to pack a huge amount of kinetic power.

Those that use science and mechanical engineering to design their bots tend to win.

Dan

[Doc Nickel]

I've been into BattleBots since before BattleBots were even a thing.

For those coming in late, what we now know as BattleBots started out as semi-informal competitions back in the very early 90s. As things progressed, they laid down some rules and got more organized, and as the power of the robots climbed, they had to go from plywood fencing, to lexan walls, to finally a Lexan enclosure.

-Fun fact, the bottom row of the current "BattleBox", the first eight feet of it, is two inches of ballistic Lexan.

-Second fun fact: Mythbusters Adam and Jamie, as well as co-buster Grant, were BattleBots alumni from long before the first TV show.

By the late 90s, it was well-organized and well-attended, and Comedy Central came in with an offer to televise it. They made several changes specifically for the show, helped whip up some marketing contracts, and brought it to TV.

First year was quite popular, second year a bit less popular, third year less still. And Comedy Central had been piling money into special effects, semi-famous announcers and other fluff, so it was costing them more money per show at a time of decreasing ratings.

Why the drop off? Largely due to poor editing. The bulk of the last season were shows featuring lightweight-class 'bots, and battles between often-weaponless wedge 'bots and "pushy" 'bots. The people really into the competition liked 'em, but the average man-on-the-street viewer wanted to see the big heavyweights and superheavyweights, with powerful active weapons creating some carnage.

After the third season Comedy Central cancelled it, but that didn't put an end to the event itself. The group (as a loose definition) still had their own "battle boxes" and hundreds of people still had robots, so they just went back to their untelevised setups. Oh, and there were about three separate "leagues", with competitions spread out all over the States. (Plus the UK and others.)

Interest started building back up again, and so they made a new arrangement to bring it back to TV. I don't know the specifics, but among other things, I think they got rid of the lightweight and possibly even middleweight classes (or at least they're not televising them) plus they loosened the rules to help add some visual flash- you can now use flamethrowers, you can have flying drones accompanying your primary robot (though the combined weight still has to meet maximums for that class) and so on.

They also got rid of the idiot "famous announcers" bit, among other things. It's still a toss-up to see how well this new season will do. On one hand, it'll get better coverage thanks to streaming video and YouTube, on the other hand, it's no cheaper to hold an event than it was 15 years ago, probably more so with insurance and things, so we'll see.

Doc.

[Doc Nickel]

The ones that look good appear to be appealing to the producers just to get air time.

-That's one of the recent changes. I don't recall exactly how they did it, but in the old show, there were contractual requirements to televise the robots that had toy contracts, plus they had to show a certain number of battles from each class, plus other requirements. That led to, as I said above, them being more or less forced to televise uninteresting fights- like a bout between two lightweight wedges, neither of which has an active weapon.

The current format, as I understand it, still has the "league" format, or "round robin" format, or whatever (your bot fights the winner of the last bout, the winner of your bout goes on to fight the winner of a separate fight, etc.)

BUT, they're free to televise whatever they want. They're under no obligation to show any particular robot, or any particular matchup in any particular class. So now they're free to show only the really interesting fights- the ones with the heavy active weapons, or the really interesting weapons, or the really interesting designs.

So participants are talking advantage of that, giving their robots fancy paintjobs, cool waterjet-cut armor, and visual bits like lighting effects (one 'bot had a "Knight Rider" type eye in the middle of it's blade) or even flame effects (one overhead-clamping 'bot had a "fire mohawk" on the clamping arm- didn't do a thing as a weapon, but looked really cool. )

Bots like Tentomushi (a bot with a silly looking lady bug or crab carapace ) are mainly for show and only win through strange failures of their opponents.

-Actually, under the old rules, Tentomushi was actually very effective. Not all the 'bots had active weapons, so that big bug could capture them fairly easily- and just 'capturing' the other guy scored points.

Today, with virtually everyone having powerful active weapons, not so much.

The more successful ones show signs of some serious engineering.

-I can't remember the name of it right now, but there's a 'bot run by a team from... Brazil, was it? It's a low, round hockey puck, with a drum spinner at one end. The chassis was milled out of a single block of aluminum (we're talking like 2' across and 6" thick) so the armor over the tires is something like 2" thick. The drum up front, as I recall, weighed some 70 pounds, and they spun it to something ludicrous, like 10,000 or 12,000 RPM.

There's a video- come to think of it, I'm not 100% certain it's the same 'bot- where it gets flipped over during a battle, and the sheer gyroscopic power of that huge weight going that fast, automatically flips the robot back upright. I can't imagine they actually designed it that way, but still...

Doc.

[A.K. Boomer]

-
-I can't remember the name of it right now, but there's a 'bot run by a team from... Brazil, was it? It's a low, round hockey puck, with a drum spinner at one end. The chassis was milled out of a single block of aluminum (we're talking like 2' across and 6" thick) so the armor over the tires is something like 2" thick. The drum up front, as I recall, weighed some 70 pounds, and they spun it to something ludicrous, like 10,000 or 12,000 RPM.

There's a video- come to think of it, I'm not 100% certain it's the same 'bot- where it gets flipped over during a battle, and the sheer gyroscopic power of that huge weight going that fast, automatically flips the robot back upright. I can't imagine they actually designed it that way, but still...

Doc.

Doc that's the one I was talking about --- it's Minotaur - I will try to find a clip


Edit; not the best video site but it did work for me after a little download time http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTYxODc0ODE1Ng.html

[quasi]

I saw one recently, it was very interesting. I think one of the myth busters was a judge.

[Hawkeye]

I competed in 2001. I got my bot kicked, but had a blast! Here's a link to my bot, http://battlebots.wikia.com/wiki/Bot_Mulcher . I may compete in robogames someday, I've got more experience (13 years mentoring a high school robot team) and lots more tools now. If you want to compete and do well you'll need both a tough bot, and be a skilled driver.

[Doc Nickel]

I competed in 2001.

-Innovative use of a wheelbarrow.

Only one better than that, was Ziggo's innovative use of a cooking Wok.

Doc.

[A.K. Boomer]

Hawkeye thanks for posting win or lose that's great that you hung it out there - I bet you learned allot and if you did take another stab at it you would do a whole lot better although the robots have gotten more advanced too so hard to say,

Dan mentioned allot of the ones that do well have lots of stored kinetic energies just waiting to connect - although if something like a wedge flips them over and they don't have a means of correcting the situation it really does not take a conventional weapon so to speak.

and even the kinetics have to be designed right - some of the horizontals actually toss themselves about as much as the opponent when they connect - about the most stable is the drum roller that is rotating up - this puts the force down and just makes it hunker into the floor more - sometimes the arss end will hop up a little but that's about it,

I will have to take a look at the rule book just out of curiosity - im imagining they have allot of rules and regs now covering things like throw netting to gum up anything that rotates - or rules against a fairly docile looking creature that has + and - porcupine quills linked to a 1,000,000 volt cap that runs up and touches the other guy and fries his entire electrical system lol

One thing I did notice is allot of the newer machines have last minute bolt on's depending what kind of opponent your matched with - smart...

[J Tiers]

Back while it was still on TV, it seemed that there were a few predictable failures....

Flipping over. That led to a lot of losses, no provision for getting back upright. One or two worked either way, which was a good approach.

Damage to external wheels. A major error... complex or fragile wheels on an otherwise well-armored unit.

Those seemed to be the biggies

Actual breaching the case was fairly rare, except for a few with poor armoring.

I did see one or two that had more-or less severely damaged the opponent, but got hung up on the debris and lost anyway.

Some were apparently damaged internally when hit by a stored energy weapon, a spinning roller, or in a couple cases, a vertical axis arm like a lawnmower blade with weights on the end.

I recall one of those spinning arm units actually tore itself to bits after killing the opponent, when a weight came off one end of the arm in the collision.