Who’s the Best Robot?
The most important thing to remember is that
BattleBots is a single-elimination tournament with one
champion. In addition to the Giant Nut trophy, the winning
team received a $60,500 cash prize. For this first season on
ABC, veteran robot teams from the United States and the
United Kingdom were invited to submit design applications
for a 250 pound fighting robot. Twenty-four teams were
chosen as competitors, with six more alternate teams
selected to ensure a complete event with 27 fights.
Rock, Paper, Scissors
The second most important thing to remember about
BattleBots is that it is entertainment that must survive on
network television. In the past, the game was “spinner,
flipper, wedge.” The most pejorative phrase you could utter
about someone’s robot was that it’s a “boring wedge,” and
there were a few fights between slow moving wedge-bots
that were painful to watch. The fact remained that the
easiest way to beat a powerful spinner was to use a
low angled wedge to deflect its energy.
Figure 1 shows three archetypal robots from the
2015 BattleBots event. At the left is Captain
Shrederator, a full-body spinner with the largest
rotating mass in the tournament. At the upper right is
Bronco, the most powerful flipper at the event. At the
lower right is Stinger the Killer Bee, a “wedgy” lifter
which knocked out Shrederator and, in turn, was
knocked out by Bronco. Bronco was done in by
another spinner. To increase the audience appeal for
this new show on ABC, BattleBots instituted an active
weapon requirement, to wit:
The first obvious effect of this rule is to increase
the number of spinners; over half of the initial field of
24 had a spinning weapon. The less obvious effect is to
reduce the number of flippers. Only two robots had lifting
weapons with sufficient velocity to launch an opponent off
the ground. That left eight robots that are best described
as lifting wedges or clamping lifters, and a few with flamethrowers for added excitement.
Missed Opportunity
One of the most exciting robots I had hoped to see
fight was Beta from the United Kingdom. Beta is a
hammer-bot, with a very heavy metal cylinder that comes
down with enough force to lift the body of the robot
completely off the ground. Every robot that goes into the
BattleBox should be built to withstand blows from the
“pulverizers” — driver-controlled hammers in each corner of
the arena. A hammer bot must be very powerful to be
effective, and in testing, Beta hit much harder than the
pulverizers.
Unfortunately, on the trans-Atlantic flight from England
to San Francisco, CA the airline lost the bag containing their
Over the course of three days, two dozen robots came together to fight for
BattleBots’ coveted Giant Nut. Now that the tournament is over, let’s take a
closer look at some of the details of how the event was run.
By Michael "Fuzzy" Mauldin, Team Toad
Photos by Michael "Fuzzy" Mauldin and BattleBots, Inc.
SERVO 09.2015 57
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Figure 1.
BattleBots 2015
That’s a Wrap