Servo - November 2015

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