TechStuff vs. BattleBots

from in the past. The box is locked, the lights are on. It's robot fighting time, right and uh, and we're doing this because of a little Facebook feedback from Corey who says, please do a podcast about battle butts and now we will. All right then, Actually, the battle bots is but one form of robot competition. Um. As a matter of fact, there there are many different kinds

of competition overall. Now, uh, you might be thinking of a first which is a different type of robot competition in which you build robots that are supposed to solve specific projects. It's uh an educational I think of anyway.

I think of it as an educational robot contest on which you are trying to do something constructive with your robot, right, Dean Kaman is involved with that one exactly, is exactly and I think as a matter of fact, I think there is an episode of stuff from the Science Lab from a long time ago that may have focused on on that. Yeah. Actually they did a visit to first to the robot competition because that they tend to take

place in Georgia. Now, you know, this is one of the things that I like about you know, Lego, you build these massive things, you can build them in all different kinds of configurations, and robots are are similar in that you can do all kinds of things. You can have them lift things, you can have them move and and grapple, and then as with many of my Lego toys, you can also bust them into many, many little pieces.

And that's what battle bots is and it's smash yes. Um. The uh, the whole concept is sometimes i would say probably mostly attributed to a guy named Mark Thorpe who he actually was working for Mr George Lucas UM. He was a senior designer for Lucas Toys. Uh, and at that point he was he came up with the idea of fighting vehicles. UM. You know, basically he was surprised. I went to his website in researching this, and he said that he was surprised that people seemed sort of

indifferent to it. And he said, you know what, somebody's going to figure out how this is gonna work. In fact, that was almost a verbatim direct quote um. But he also was thinking about the possibility of creating a radio controlled vacuum cleaner. Can you imagine that a robotic vacuum cleaner? Uh The idea would be too make it an enjoyable process.

Mr Thorpe said, Uh. So he started thinking about the idea as he was taking is one of his uh um inventions apart and said, wait a minute, what if I put you know, tools of destruction on this, and we we had these robotic remote controlled robots and acume cleaner of death. Well yeah, more or less. So essentially that's how robot Wars was created. Came up with the idea of having a robotic competition which you would build remote controlled devices that would attempt to destroy one another

in an arena. Uh and the arena that's arena itself would also be trying to destroy the two robots, so there would be obstacles in play, and you could either fall prey to them or perhaps manipulate your opponent so that, yes, it would become a jumble of of garbage. Yes, UM,

this was. This started happening around UM and at the time you know it launched, it was let's say this qualified to the people who would actually want to watch something like this a smashing success, no pun intended for once, UM, because sometimes it was a flipping success exactly. But yeah, it took off, the idea, took off the problem with robot wars. And I don't want to get into this in lots of detail because I don't know all the

mechanisms of this. UM. Mr Thorpe worked with a company in New York, record company UH to help him finance it. The company UM was named Profile and UH Profile Records at that point, and apparently after some time there were some grappling over the rights to the name and the concept. UH. And by that point, you know, I don't wanted to skip ahead UH in in a great but this is not really a history podcast because we're actually going to

talk about that UM as the thing is. By that by the point where it really got to be a serious fight, and we're talking like lawyers are getting involved with this enough people were involved with the idea that they it sort of took off and other people became involved with it, and that's where, you know, some of the fans broke off and started their own U league,

which is now known as battle Bots. Yeah. They had become disenchanted with Robot Wars just because of all the legal wrangling and UH there was there was there was an effort to bring it to UH, to England as a television show, which eventually did happen and was very successful there than some shows in the United States as well, with the United States cast that also were you know, followed under the Robot Wars name. But some people during this this UH period of turmoil, they just felt like

they felt like they were being overlooked. They felt like, you know, this was supposed to be just about engineers and robots specialist building machines and having them compete, and it's kind of all getting lost in this legal shuffle. So they sort of formed a splinter group and split off from there, and that's that was kind of the genesis of battle Bots. Ye. And UH, of course, the the the people who were in charge of robot Wars

sued the people who were in charge of battle bots. Um. But as as time went on, battle bots sort of came to be the primary competition in the United States, and robot wars had moved overseas to the United Kingdom. Um. And you know the thing is this probably would have passed in relative obscurity for people who really like robots, but um, in the United States, they and televising BattleBots competition on the Honest Channel possible. Well, you know, there are a lot of things that have come out of

Comedy Central that you might not have expected. Yeah, but you know, robots fighting each other, and you know, we we should say here if you have never seen battle bots, when you hear robots fighting each other, you may be thinking of because yeah, like humanoid type robots, robots that have an anthropomorphic type shape. Uh, that's not the case. Some of these robots were quite odd. A lot of them look like boxes with wheels, um. And in fact, a lot of them that's essentially what their their basic

form factor was. But you know, it's there was nothing inherently comedic, although of course the the play by play announcers and the behavior of the crowds could sometimes lend a slight comedic air to the proceedings, but it wasn't you know, you wouldn't call it a comedy. It was a competition, no, no, but it was certainly a lighthearted competition. No one, no person or was getting hurt, at least

not in the arena. Feelings might be heard, certainly, Oh, I'm sure there was more than a little bit of that. But yes, for for a few brief years here in the United States in the early two thousand's and I guess technically stretching back to Maybee, but really in the early two thousand's, UM, there were a few seasons of battle Bots, which I recorded on my DVR and watched as far as I know, every episode of and was very sorry to see that they canceled it, and I

was a little concerned that it might disappear. UM actually was talking with a friend about the possibility of creating

a battle bot. As it turned out that we uh didn't get very far with that because creating a battle bot a robot to do this, we're not talking about, uh, you know, something like the Lego mind Storms that would be kind of fun too, Whether those would last very long in a battle, not in in this particular kind of arena, because we're talking about things with spikes and buzz saws and ramps, ramps and flying metal, some of which gets very very heavy. Uh. It takes a lot

of pneumatics, UM, heavy duty motors, hydraulics, cydraulics, UM. These these tools are very heavy and can do a lot of damage to people, which is why the arena is completely enclosed. UM, we're not talking about just the sides. There's not it's it's not like you might see at a race where there's a fence to a certain part, but otherwise it's not enclosed. This is in a basically in a square box a cage, so before they before

they compete. Um. So the thing is, though, these are very expensive because not only do you build your body, you also have to maintain the bot. Say you get in this is this is an a tournament format. This competition, so you have many rounds of competition. So you get a first round match and you are competing against another robot with your robot. Let's say you're successful or you know, the person's motor the remote control never works, or the you know, battery burns out, let's say you are you

do actually work, and you go against one another. Well, the other guy, the other guy's robot tore part of the skin of your robot off with the buzz saw that's attached to the robot. Well, now you have a second round match. What are you gonna do? Well, you have to refurbish that. Well, let's say the the hammer on the top of your robot with the spike that that pierces the arm or the other one and carries

it into the buzz saw that's in the the arena floor. Um, well, you know the thing is it got stuck and the

motor burned out or if they're gonna have to replace it. Well, this is expensive stuff you can't just jump in with, right, I mean, and when you've got things like pneumatics and hydraulics that may potentially be powering part of your robot, You've got lots of tubes that can suffer damage, and if there's a leak, then clearly your robot's not going to perform up to what the standard was before and you need to replace that in the middle. And yeah,

it can be very expensive. And it's not like there are a lot of off the shelf parts for these robots, although there are companies that are that kind of catered to this this uh, this hobby now, and there are some places where you can buy stuff that has been specifically geared for use with robots. But especially in the early days, this was a lot of do it yourself, you know, building, taking various pieces from hardware stores and motors and and RF controllers and that kind of thing

and making it all work together. Now it's really a feat of engineering to build one of these things. Yes, and it doesn't help to have a machine shop at your disposal. So if you can't find the pieces that you need, you can make them. Yeah, you can make a custom built robot. Well they're all custom built, but you can make one where it has unique parts that you would not find anywhere else. So let's talk about the competition as in itself. Sure, because I'm sorry, Oh no,

go ahead. So so let's say you you do have a few thousand sitting around you want to go ahead and give it a try. Um, first of all, it would help to go to the battle bots website to learn more about the competition. Now, on the on the website, you'll find the rules that you need to adhere to It's not anything goes. You really have to abide by a certain set of rules of those specifications. Yep. So, uh,

you need to find out what's going on. You need to find out when the competitions are going to be. It would help to become immersed in the community, learn a little bit more about Maybe there's a regional competition you could go to to try your robot out, and then you need to start thinking about the kind of robot you want to build. UM. But let's sticking with the competition. So you go to a competition and there

are several rounds. You're given a pit area sort of like a race car might at a at a race, where you can set up your shops. So you've got all your parts for your robot. You've got your robot itself. Uh. This gives you a place to put your tools in your parts and do any necessary maintenance or tuning or UH. If you've got a switch that goes from mayme to kill, this is where you flip that switch and and you you are allowed to have a pit crew. Though your

pit crew has to be a certain size. UM. You know, there's no size limit on the team that uh, that you used to build your robot. In fact, you can have a team of one if you like, yeah, or you could have a team of an entire campus if you really want to college campus, it could be that big. But your pit crew, of course cannot be big. Now

there are several divisions. Um there's a high school division, in a college division, and the pro division, which is I don't think necessarily you're a professional robot builder, but I think they mean any age group, right, and uh, you can you can even get sponsorships, which helps for that expensive part of the game of playing this game. There are two basic variations on robots recognized in battle Bots.

There are non walking robots, so essentially anything that uses wheels or treadmills, that kind of thing treads or snakes along the four snakes along the floor. Yeah, anything that is not is not actually lifting a leg and putting it down in order to move, uh, that is considered a non walking robot. And the weight designations for those um. And if you are competing at the high school or college level, your non walking robot can weigh a maximum

of one pounds. If you're a professional, that goes up to two hundred twenty pounds, so the walking robots also called stop butts, uh those that they can get a little heavier, So in high school or college competitions it can be up to a hundred sixty pounds and for a professional whopping three hundred pounds, So you can have a three hundred pounds stomp robot if you are competing on a professional battle bots team. Now and a little scary.

The the whole goal here, I mean we we've alluded to it quite a bit, but the whole goal here is that you you face off against an opponent. You know it's been in both cases. Your your robot is normally controlled by remote controls. Normally you would you would be under you know, each robot would be under human control, although there are rules for autonomous robots which we'll talk about in the second and they're pretty fun. But the

idea here is that you go into a competition. There's a set amount of time for the round, and your goal is to disable the other robot within that time, or to inflict more damage or show better strategy. You know, your your your rounds are you The round is judged on various criteria like how much damage did you inflict, how much damage damage did you receive, and what was your you know, how strategic was your attack. If you were running away the whole time, you're not gonna be

judged very well. But if you if you are able to disable the other robot, or you inflict more damage and play a better game than the other team, then you would go on to the next round. So, uh, that's that's the general idea. Now we can get down into some more specifics, like what what constitutes your you know, your robots weaponry. There were some robots that the weapon was essentially the fact that the robot itself was shaped

like a ramp. It was designed to scoot under the opposing robot and flip it over in the hopes that by turning a robot upside down you have rendered it useless because it wasn't designed to move upside down. Uh. And then that we saw a lot of robots early on that that was the basic design. It was just

essentially a ramp. It might have a little wheel or a treadmill on the ramp to help propel the robot over it, you know, the the opposing robot over it, so it can flip it over and then we saw a lot of robots pop up that could work either right side up or upside down. So you know that that weapon is a useless but you're supposed to have some sort of weapon, right, That's right, that's it's a requirement that you do have at least one active weapon on on your body, and you can you can participate

even if your weapon is disabled. I mean you could have a giant spike on the front of it and that that counts. Uh. But say you have a you know, an arm on your your bot and it doesn't move anymore, but you move on and you can't get it repaired. Well, as long as you still have the weapon attached to the bot, if I'm reading the rules correctly, it's still allowed to continue to compete it just maybe at a sincere or disadvantage the next round. Sure, let's see. I've

I've seen a number of different kinds of bots. There are kinds, as I said before, that might have a saw built into them which attempt to uh to destroy pieces of the other body. I've seen um uh bots with a hammer or or a hatchet um as. If I'm not mistaken, grant of MythBusters. Oh he's built several. Yeah, I remember the one that that that I saw of his was one of those that had a basically a spike that would come down and basically try to impale

the other robot. They have that the wedges. I remember one that didn't have a weapon that would necessarily try to destroy the other bot, but would try to capture it so it could pick it up and and take it into the hazards, drop it off there and let

the let the board do the rest. Yes, yes, um so, and and the box hazards included um saws that were mounted underneath the floor, so if your robot happened to pass over this basically the hole in the floor where the saws come up, the box might send the saws up through there and cut your robot. Yeah, it was very much like an Indiana Jones movie type thing, like spikes could fly up out of the floor or not. When I say fly, I don't mean like they would

actually be projectiles they did stop. Yeah, there was the spikes would pop up out of the floor or and the spikes wouldn't necessarily impale, but they would often overturn robots. Yes, yes, and there was a spike strip on the side now, uh, there wasn't any anything necessarily that would you know, it didn't pop out of the side of the floor, but and it wouldn't necessarily impale your robots. Say you just

bumped it into there. Well you might think, if you've never seen this show, you might think, well, it's a big deal, right, Yeah, I can get away from that. Well not. If the other robot manages to wedge one of the spikes into a tread on your robot or hand escape, then you're a sitting duck. Yeah. One of the rules of battle Butts is that your robot must be able to move at minimum two ft per second

in a straight line. And if your robot is at some point uh disabled enough where it's unable to move, like let's say it's just stuck moving in circles, then the round maybe ended prematurely, and you know, the victory given to the other robot because you know you at that point, really there's no way for you to to when unless the other robot suffers a failure, and in which case that's not kind of a hollow victory. Um.

There there are certain things that are specifically not allowed. Yes, projectiles are not allowed unless they are tethered to the robot.

I would assume this is probably a safety precaution because while the the battle box is enclosed, enclosed, and it's likely to protect you from a piece of flying shrapnel that might spin off of a robot during a collision, if you had a machine gun mounted on your battle bot, it probably would be you know, it could be depending on where you're using, strong enough to pierce the box and injure the the spectators outside. This is why I'm never allowed to compete. There's no fun in that. Yeah.

So you can have a projectile if it is tethered to the robot, and the project the tether has to be eight feet or or less in length. Um, you cannot have anything that goes beyond that. You you are allowed to use covering weapons, So weapons that could cover a uh AN opponent, but they must have the covering must be either rigid or semi rigid, and the the attacking robot must be able to remove the cover at

any time. So, in other words, you can have like a solid not a net, but like to say, like a little cage on a lever come down and and encapsulate an opponent, and then you drive your opponent into a pit. You could do that, but you could not shoot a net at a at a robot and then foul its wheels that way. In fact, you're not allowed to use any weapons that were specifically designed to foul a a a robot's wheels or treads just by getting tangled in there. So you couldn't drop like string or

rope or um. They talk about. You can use balloons and air bags to push a robot, but you can't use them in such a way so that they come off your robot, deflate and then become a fouling hazard. Not intentionally anyway. Yeah, if it happens by accident, you

you you know, that's that's another matter. Electro Magnets are there's a there's a very specific use, so you can you can have them mounted on your robot and use them that way, but they are not supposed to be designed to interfere with the radio frequency signal that's sent by the remote control and uh, you can't have like a cattle prode or uh, something that's going to essentially create an electromagnetic field that's going to be so powerful that it just causes a robot to you know, go

down you can't do anything like that. Like, you know, that also destroys my plan for my e MP robot that was building. I can't do that anymore. And I was just about to figure out how I could do it without detonating a nuclear warhead. So I was so close. But um, you can't use flame or uh weapons that would obscure vision as um as a tactic. You can use the both of those things in what they call effects.

But that's sort of like you guys, if you've ever watched professional wrestling and they announced the wrestler, and the wrestler comes down the ramp and they're all these pyro effects that go off and there's a big video playing in the background and maybe smoke is coming up. Um, you know that's all for the effect of him taking the stage or her taking the stage before the match. Same sort of thing. That's the idea is that, you know,

like you have a little flame shooting out the back. Well, that's okay if it's just for the entrance or you know, a victory lap or something, but you can't use it as a weapon. Yeah, but there are things, there are reasons why you might not want to do that, including the fact that you might have a flammable material on board. Now you can't have an internal combustion engine powering your

bought a motor. But the thing again is if, for example, the other bought severs your gas line or whatever it is that you're using for fuel, uh, and uh some spark catches it on fire, you may lose your entire bot. Uh, both bots might get lost in that, because, yeah, you're talking about a true flame hazard there. It's a I mean, by definition, it has to be a combustible liquid. I assume that they would stop the fight and someone would go in with a fire extinguisher to put it out,

but not I would assume before it would do some damage. Um. Also, it's going to add to the weight. If you had a smoke machine and a you know, little flamethrower on there for the effects, then that's how many idly a couple of pounds um. And you know, some bots are going to want to stay light and some are going to want to be heavier, depending on the kind of attack that that you're delivering. So you really have to be very strategic about what you add to your bot. UM.

Some bots themselves are weapons to UM. Some of my favorites are are what they call spin bots UM. A couple of them were made from an upside down walk um, which doesn't sound very you know, scary, but if you mount things on the outside of these bots and you're going at a certain number of RPMs, when you come into the say really thin titanium coating of another bot, it may rip the outside of that thing right off. Yeah. Yeah,

these these things like I've seen somewhere. It was essentially like a lawnmower arm that would spin around on the top of it. And yeah, usually you have a shell on the outside of the robot that is capable of spinning in one direction or the other. Uh, and then the wheels and everything are independent of that, so they you know, the spinning motion isn't what propels the robot across the floor. It's just another element to the robot. Um.

It's a very interesting type of weapon. Yeah, it's tricky too, because I mean it's going to throw off. The way the robot handles is just just from the force that's generated from the spinning attack. The impact usually causes both robots to go off in a different direction. It looks like when a pinball hits a like a bumper and a pinball machine. It's just like bing and then it just flies across the floor. Um, the I shall will point out this point when I when I mentioned that

they're independent. Uh, each team is allowed to operators. You can have two people operating the robots. So you could have one person who's essentially steering the robot and driver driver, and another person would be the the one operating the weapons. And usually you would have two separate controllers working on two separate frequencies. Uh. That brings me to another weapon that you can't use. You can't use any kind of weapon that would interfere with your opponents radio frequencies. So

no fair jamming the other guy. Yeah, which is yet again all the things that I would plan. Like, here's the brilliance of my plan is you immediately disabled the other robot before it even has a chance to do anything, and then you just go on wump up on it. Actually you wouldn't even have to do that. You could just move in a straight line. The other robot can't move, it's just you know, it's disqualified. It has to be able to show that it can still move in order

to be considered viable. Um. Well, even if you don't consider that playing dirty, you have to take into account the effect it has in the spectators. When the other robot doesn't even move, it's no fun, and when both robots don't get into it a little bit fun. I'm looking at winning dude. Yeah, okay, so um, but here's some other stuff that you can do that or that

that's kind of cool. You can have a jumping robot. Okay, you are, Um, you're jumping robot can only there's a limit on how high robots are allowed to jump within battle bots. That limit is six feet. I was telling Chris earlier, if I saw a robot jump six ft in the air straight up, I would immediately turn around and walk out of the building for fear of my life because I don't know. There's something about jumping robot that just scares me. Um, there is. Uh. You can

have a hovercraft as a robot. You could you could build your robot could propel itself via the same method as a hovercraft. You are not allowed to have powered flight or jets or rockets. Though yet again I knew you were going to say that, so um also also lighten sound. Um, you can't have any device on your robot that is meant to blind your opponent, your human opponent. Yeah, you can't have like a like a fog light attached to your robot that you turn on whenever it's facing

your opponents. Um And, you can't. You can't use lasers either on the outside. You can use lasers on the inside if they're used to operate your robot in any way, that's fine. You just can't have any exposed lasers that are meant to be in effect or anything like that. Um And, as we said, you can use flames and smoke for just effect purposes. If you are using flames, you can only use propane or butane as the fuel,

and it has to be in gas form. It cannot shoot it as liquid or gel, because obviously that would be much more dangerous. Um And I was mentioning the autonomous robots. You are allowed to build an autonomous robot. Now, an autonomous robot acts on its own right. It has its own ability to perform actions and and on a certain level, make decisions and act upon them. But the rule for autonomous robots is that when the match starts, it has to be under human control. You have to

be able to switch it to autonomous modes. So essentially it's like you know autopilot, right, you push a button or whatever and it switches to autonomous UH mode, and then you have to be able to have the ability to butt in and take it over manually if needed. So as long as it follows those rules, you're allowed to have an autonomous robot. That's actually pretty cool. I don't remember them doing that back when I was watching the show, and unfortunately I haven't seen any of the

competition since then. UM, if you happen to be in Miami, Florida on February, that doesn't give you much time. Based on when this podcast is going to publish, you can you can see this year's competition at the Coconut Grove Expo Center. UM. So getting back to the the actual format. So you have you've decided to build a robot. You've made all the tough choices. What kind of weapon you want? What do you want to build it out of? You've had your metallurgically UH gifted friends help you with the

choice between titanium and steel. Um do you really want to use lex hand for the outside? I don't know. Um, you've built your bot, you've got extra parts, you've got extra tools, you've got your buddies to help you with it. You show up at the tournament and you when you enter,

you're in a tournament grid. So you go up for your first bout, and basically it's if you win, you continue, uh, you lose, and you stick around and help people out because the only people who can share parts, according to the rules are people who are already out of the competition.

So say you've won, but your motor burned out that you need for your your actuator arm for your weapon, Well, somebody from a previous round or from another competition can loan you a motor to use in your bot if you don't have one handy, but that person has to have already had their robot eliminated. Um. That's why it's always good to carry extras of these parts because you're gonna need them. Um. But basically, as you progress up the ladder, uh, you know eventually they crown a winner.

Now that this is done in several classes, just like you would see in human boxing matches, they're weight classes, right, And now that there are in the competitions more robust you have high school, college, and pro levels and weight classes within those levels, so you don't have a really tiny spin bot going up against a you know, a crusher buzz saw from you know, the top weight class. I have them matched evenly, and and they give out

awards based on that, um, you know, prize money. There's usually something I think that they try to give people. I don't know that anyone has become rich being a battle bot owner. Yeah, it's really an engineering contest more than anything else. Yeah, I think it's I think it's more for fun than anything else and bragging rights, um, unless you're on the show's space, in which case it's

a matter of honor. Yes, But um, I think more than that though, from what the research I've done since I, as I said, I hadn't watched the show in many years, I was sort about of it, it seems like there's been a real community spring up to teach people how to build robots, you know, for hobbyists. Um, there are people who make parts for competitions. Now that that weren't I mean people take used to take uh you know, chainsaws and other parts off the shelf for machine things themselves.

There these you don't have to be a complete uh robotics expert to do this kind of thing. You can really get into it and ease yourself in more than you used to be able to. And I think there's a real um community of people where they just hang out and share ideas now where there there probably wasn't before. So over the span of uh, just a few years, you know, this is the kind of activity that sprung up.

And I think competitions like this and and first the first robotics competition, you know, it's it encourages people to learn more about it, and younger people are getting involved in it too, so uh, congratulations to them. I hope it will make a return to TV. I really miss watching the show. It was so much fun. It's a lot of fun. And again, you know, nobody people are out a lot of money when they lose, but watching the robots take each other apart, which is so much fun.

And it's great to teach the basics of engineering robotics that kind of thing. And you often will see things that show that people are thinking outside the box, so to speak, and that uh that possibly have have applications beyond what you know, what some might see is just kind of a hobby, so it's simar about Yeah, definitely. So if any of you guys have any comments about battle bots, maybe you built one and you would like to tell us about it, I'd love to hear that, definitely,

let us know you can. You can contact us on Facebook or Twitter. Are handled there is tech stuff hs W, or you can email us. That email address is text stuff at how stuff works dot com and Chris and I will taught to you again really soon. For more on this and bathrooms of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. So learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The house Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived.

Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you