32 SERVO 11.2015
When entering the BattleBox, if you see the steely eyed gaze and confident smile of
Ray Billings staring back at you, you
know you're in trouble. If Ray is
standing over the 250 lb harbinger of
destruction known as Tombstone, you
know you are in a whole lot of
trouble. Ray, his son Justin, and
teammate Rick Russ have been
breaking bots and shattering dreams
for 14 years. Together they are Team
Hardcore Robotics and they have been
weaving a path of destruction through
such notable robot combat events as
BattleBots (original series),
RoboGames, ComBots Cup, Steel
Conflict, Motorama, Robot Revolution,
NPC Charity Open, Robojoust, and
West Coast Robotics.
Now they have added BattleBots
2015 to that list with their new 250 lb
heavyweight, Tombstone to battle for
honor and glory in the BattleBox.
After the airing of this year's
amazing BattleBots tournament, I had
a chance to talk with Ray about his
experience.
Olin: Ray, tell us a little bit about
yourself and how you got started in
competitive robotics.
Billings: I currently work as an
Engineering Technician at Intel
Corporation at the Folsom site.
Interestingly, I started working here
after I had been building combat
robots for several years, and one of
the key reasons I got the job was the
experience from robots. The job
doesn’t help with the bots, but the
bots helped a lot with the job!
I used to work at an adult college
as the network administrator and
taught computer networking. My boss
at the time was a fan of the original
BattleBots show, and used to bring in
the recorded matches; we would
watch them between classes. We
decided to build something together,
but unfortunately he had other things
get in way and wasn’t able to
continue. But the idea was firmly
planted, so I built something for
BattleBots 4.0. I’ve been competing
ever since.
Olin: What other tournaments
have you won or placed in?
Billings: My main robot over the
last decade has been the
heavyweight, Last Rites. This has
competed at the RoboGames and
ComBots Cup events, placing highly or
winning in every event since 2007. In
fact, the dominance of a few select
robots over this period ended up with
the term “The Big Three,” which were
my robot, Last Rites, Gary Gin’s robot,
Original Sin, and Matt Maxham’s
robot, Sewer Snake. For every
RoboGames or ComBots Cup through
that period up to today, at least two
out of those three — and usually all
three of them — were the top three
bots at each event.
It seems I am doomed to never
actually win the HW class at
RoboGames (2nd or 3rd each time!),
but I have won the ComBots Cup
twice, and am the current reigning
ComBots champion.
Olin: What can you tell us about
your team members and what skills
they bring with them?
Billings: This started out as a
father and son project with me and
my son, Justin. There are many people
who have been part of the team at
various junctures over the years, but
even today it remains very much a
father/son focused team. Current
team members are myself, Justin
Billings, and Rick Russ. Rick used to
run his own robot team, but decided
he wanted a more pit-oriented role
rather than driver or designer, and has
been with the team for several years
now.
I pretty much do all the design
and major fabrication. I’m also the
guy who ends up paying for most of
it. Justin has turned into a pretty
good driver over the years, as well as
being able to handle most of the
BattleBots™ Gets Tombstoned
● by Chris & Tiffany Olin
tombstoned:
verb, informal
tomb•stoned \ˈtüm-ˌstōnd\
Utterly defeated quickly
and decisively
Entering the arena:
Rick Russ, Justin Billings, and
Ray Billings with Tombstone.