winnow the 24 competitors down to 12. Then, four
wildcards were awarded to robots that lost their first fight,
but showed promise. Twelve winners and four wildcards
gave 16 robots to fit into a standard seeded bracket.
The purpose of “seeding” a tournament is to use the
best information available about the competitors to arrange
the bracket so that the best players meet as late as possible
in the tournament. Once the prelims were over, the
committee chose the four wildcards and assigned seeds
based on the performance of each robot up to that point,
as well as its entertainment value and appearance.
One specific question I did ask was about the re-match
between LockJaw and Overhaul. In the preliminary round,
LockJaw won a split-decision against Overhaul. After the
seedings were assigned, it was totally coincidental that
these two robots met again.
The Hazards
One familiar feature of the BattleBox is the presence of
hazards: actively destructive machinery to ensnare and
damage unwary robots. As mentioned earlier, the
pulverizers are four large hammers — one in each corner of
the box. As in the college-level BattleBotsIQ events, the
pulverizers are now controlled by the teams themselves. The
red team controls two hammers and the blue team controls
the other two. Colored circular targets painted on the
BattleBox floor show where the hammers will strike, but it
is up to the team member pressing the button to make a
hit.
The killsaws were not active for the preliminary fights,
but in later rounds, were randomly activated by a computer.
That meant the killsaws were not much of a factor in any
of the fights.
The most destructive weapon in the entire tournament
had to be the screw hazards. In past events, they have been
located near the corners, but for the 2015 ABC event they
were moved to the middle of each wall. They also seemed
more powerful this year. More robots were knocked out by
being pushed into the screws and dragged to their demise
than any other cause of “death.”
The Brackets
Figure 5 shows the brackets through to the quarter-finals. The most energetic fight of the entire tournament
was Tombstone versus Witch Doctor — the only spinner-vs-spinner fight in the elimination rounds (there were three
spinner-vs-spinner fights in the prelims, but you didn’t see
the two spinning weapons hit each other in any of those
fights).
Team Hardcore has several different weapon bars that
they can attach to Tombstone for different fights. Against
Witch Doctor, they used a shorter S7 tool steel bar that had
previously seen action in super heavyweight fights back in
Season 5 of the Comedy Central show. It has also been
used on their heavyweight robot, Last Rites in the
intervening decade. Ray Billings told me this bar had been
used in about 25 matches.
In this fight, the blade broke completely in half —
probably because of stress fractures that had been created
in those previous events. Figure 6 shows Tombstone’s
broken blade, along with Bronco’s busted flipper.
One of my favorite matches of the entire tournament
was the quarterfinal matchup between the flipper, Bronco
and the lifter, Stinger the Killer Bee. Stinger is a slightly
heavier version of the heavyweight, Sewer Snake that has
been a ComBots and RoboGames champion. In addition to
a modular lifting weapon attachment, Stinger has a flame
thrower. Figure 7 shows driver, Matt Maxham giving us a
sneak peak at the special weapon attachment he used in
the quarterfinal match.
Bronco was able to throw Stinger into the air several
times, flipping the yellow bot end-over-end while the flame
thrower made flaming spirals in the air. Bronco scored a
knockout by flipping Stinger over the arena bumpers and
SERVO 09.2015 59
Figure 4.
Figure 5.
Figure 6.
