Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulett,
Speaker 1: and I'm an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as usual as senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: No disassemble A nice thank you. I don't usually play
Speaker 1: the quote game, but today's episode is one I've quoted
Speaker 1: from in the past. The box is locked, the lights
Speaker 1: are on. It's robot fighting time, right and uh, and
Speaker 1: we're doing this because of a little Facebook feedback from
Speaker 1: Corey who says, please do a podcast about battle butts
Speaker 1: and now we will. All right then, Actually, the battle
Speaker 1: bots is but one form of robot competition. Um. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, there there are many different kinds
Speaker 1: of competition overall. Now, uh, you might be thinking of
Speaker 1: a first which is a different type of robot competition
Speaker 1: in which you build robots that are supposed to solve
Speaker 1: specific projects. It's uh an educational I think of anyway.
Speaker 1: I think of it as an educational robot contest on
Speaker 1: which you are trying to do something constructive with your robot, right,
Speaker 1: Dean Kaman is involved with that one exactly, is exactly
Speaker 1: and I think as a matter of fact, I think
Speaker 1: there is an episode of stuff from the Science Lab
Speaker 1: from a long time ago that may have focused on
Speaker 1: on that. Yeah. Actually they did a visit to first
Speaker 1: to the robot competition because that they tend to take
Speaker 1: place in Georgia. Now, you know, this is one of
Speaker 1: the things that I like about you know, Lego, you
Speaker 1: build these massive things, you can build them in all
Speaker 1: different kinds of configurations, and robots are are similar in
Speaker 1: that you can do all kinds of things. You can
Speaker 1: have them lift things, you can have them move and
Speaker 1: and grapple, and then as with many of my Lego toys,
Speaker 1: you can also bust them into many, many little pieces.
Speaker 1: And that's what battle bots is and it's smash yes. Um.
Speaker 1: The uh, the whole concept is sometimes i would say
Speaker 1: probably mostly attributed to a guy named Mark Thorpe who
Speaker 1: he actually was working for Mr George Lucas UM. He
Speaker 1: was a senior designer for Lucas Toys. Uh, and at
Speaker 1: that point he was he came up with the idea
Speaker 1: of fighting vehicles. UM. You know, basically he was surprised.
Speaker 1: I went to his website in researching this, and he
Speaker 1: said that he was surprised that people seemed sort of
Speaker 1: indifferent to it. And he said, you know what, somebody's
Speaker 1: going to figure out how this is gonna work. In fact,
Speaker 1: that was almost a verbatim direct quote um. But he
Speaker 1: also was thinking about the possibility of creating a radio
Speaker 1: controlled vacuum cleaner. Can you imagine that a robotic vacuum cleaner?
Speaker 1: Uh The idea would be too make it an enjoyable process.
Speaker 1: Mr Thorpe said, Uh. So he started thinking about the
Speaker 1: idea as he was taking is one of his uh
Speaker 1: um inventions apart and said, wait a minute, what if
Speaker 1: I put you know, tools of destruction on this, and
Speaker 1: we we had these robotic remote controlled robots and acume
Speaker 1: cleaner of death. Well yeah, more or less. So essentially
Speaker 1: that's how robot Wars was created. Came up with the
Speaker 1: idea of having a robotic competition which you would build
Speaker 1: remote controlled devices that would attempt to destroy one another
Speaker 1: in an arena. Uh and the arena that's arena itself
Speaker 1: would also be trying to destroy the two robots, so
Speaker 1: there would be obstacles in play, and you could either
Speaker 1: fall prey to them or perhaps manipulate your opponent so that, yes,
Speaker 1: it would become a jumble of of garbage. Yes, UM,
Speaker 1: this was. This started happening around UM and at the
Speaker 1: time you know it launched, it was let's say this
Speaker 1: qualified to the people who would actually want to watch
Speaker 1: something like this a smashing success, no pun intended for once, UM,
Speaker 1: because sometimes it was a flipping success exactly. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it took off, the idea, took off the problem with
Speaker 1: robot wars. And I don't want to get into this
Speaker 1: in lots of detail because I don't know all the
Speaker 1: mechanisms of this. UM. Mr Thorpe worked with a company
Speaker 1: in New York, record company UH to help him finance it.
Speaker 1: The company UM was named Profile and UH Profile Records
Speaker 1: at that point, and apparently after some time there were
Speaker 1: some grappling over the rights to the name and the concept. UH.
Speaker 1: And by that point, you know, I don't wanted to
Speaker 1: skip ahead UH in in a great but this is
Speaker 1: not really a history podcast because we're actually going to
Speaker 1: talk about that UM as the thing is. By that
Speaker 1: by the point where it really got to be a
Speaker 1: serious fight, and we're talking like lawyers are getting involved
Speaker 1: with this enough people were involved with the idea that
Speaker 1: they it sort of took off and other people became
Speaker 1: involved with it, and that's where, you know, some of
Speaker 1: the fans broke off and started their own U league,
Speaker 1: which is now known as battle Bots. Yeah. They had
Speaker 1: become disenchanted with Robot Wars just because of all the
Speaker 1: legal wrangling and UH there was there was there was
Speaker 1: an effort to bring it to UH, to England as
Speaker 1: a television show, which eventually did happen and was very
Speaker 1: successful there than some shows in the United States as well,
Speaker 1: with the United States cast that also were you know,
Speaker 1: followed under the Robot Wars name. But some people during
Speaker 1: this this UH period of turmoil, they just felt like
Speaker 1: they felt like they were being overlooked. They felt like,
Speaker 1: you know, this was supposed to be just about engineers
Speaker 1: and robots specialist building machines and having them compete, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of all getting lost in this legal shuffle.
Speaker 1: So they sort of formed a splinter group and split
Speaker 1: off from there, and that's that was kind of the
Speaker 1: genesis of battle Bots. Ye. And UH, of course, the
Speaker 1: the the people who were in charge of robot Wars
Speaker 1: sued the people who were in charge of battle bots. Um.
Speaker 1: But as as time went on, battle bots sort of
Speaker 1: came to be the primary competition in the United States,
Speaker 1: and robot wars had moved overseas to the United Kingdom. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know the thing is this probably would have
Speaker 1: passed in relative obscurity for people who really like robots,
Speaker 1: but um, in the United States, they and televising BattleBots
Speaker 1: competition on the Honest Channel possible. Well, you know, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of things that have come out of
Speaker 1: Comedy Central that you might not have expected. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know, robots fighting each other, and you know, we
Speaker 1: we should say here if you have never seen battle bots,
Speaker 1: when you hear robots fighting each other, you may be
Speaker 1: thinking of because yeah, like humanoid type robots, robots that
Speaker 1: have an anthropomorphic type shape. Uh, that's not the case.
Speaker 1: Some of these robots were quite odd. A lot of
Speaker 1: them look like boxes with wheels, um. And in fact,
Speaker 1: a lot of them that's essentially what their their basic
Speaker 1: form factor was. But you know, it's there was nothing
Speaker 1: inherently comedic, although of course the the play by play
Speaker 1: announcers and the behavior of the crowds could sometimes lend
Speaker 1: a slight comedic air to the proceedings, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: you know, you wouldn't call it a comedy. It was
Speaker 1: a competition, no, no, but it was certainly a lighthearted competition.
Speaker 1: No one, no person or was getting hurt, at least
Speaker 1: not in the arena. Feelings might be heard, certainly, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there was more than a little bit of that.
Speaker 1: But yes, for for a few brief years here in
Speaker 1: the United States in the early two thousand's and I
Speaker 1: guess technically stretching back to Maybee, but really in the
Speaker 1: early two thousand's, UM, there were a few seasons of
Speaker 1: battle Bots, which I recorded on my DVR and watched
Speaker 1: as far as I know, every episode of and was
Speaker 1: very sorry to see that they canceled it, and I
Speaker 1: was a little concerned that it might disappear. UM actually
Speaker 1: was talking with a friend about the possibility of creating
Speaker 1: a battle bot. As it turned out that we uh
Speaker 1: didn't get very far with that because creating a battle
Speaker 1: bot a robot to do this, we're not talking about, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, something like the Lego mind Storms that would
Speaker 1: be kind of fun too, Whether those would last very
Speaker 1: long in a battle, not in in this particular kind
Speaker 1: of arena, because we're talking about things with spikes and
Speaker 1: buzz saws and ramps, ramps and flying metal, some of
Speaker 1: which gets very very heavy. Uh. It takes a lot
Speaker 1: of pneumatics, UM, heavy duty motors, hydraulics, cydraulics, UM. These
Speaker 1: these tools are very heavy and can do a lot
Speaker 1: of damage to people, which is why the arena is
Speaker 1: completely enclosed. UM, we're not talking about just the sides.
Speaker 1: There's not it's it's not like you might see at
Speaker 1: a race where there's a fence to a certain part,
Speaker 1: but otherwise it's not enclosed. This is in a basically
Speaker 1: in a square box a cage, so before they before
Speaker 1: they compete. Um. So the thing is, though, these are
Speaker 1: very expensive because not only do you build your body,
Speaker 1: you also have to maintain the bot. Say you get
Speaker 1: in this is this is an a tournament format. This competition,
Speaker 1: so you have many rounds of competition. So you get
Speaker 1: a first round match and you are competing against another
Speaker 1: robot with your robot. Let's say you're successful or you know,
Speaker 1: the person's motor the remote control never works, or the
Speaker 1: you know, battery burns out, let's say you are you
Speaker 1: do actually work, and you go against one another. Well,
Speaker 1: the other guy, the other guy's robot tore part of
Speaker 1: the skin of your robot off with the buzz saw
Speaker 1: that's attached to the robot. Well, now you have a
Speaker 1: second round match. What are you gonna do? Well, you
Speaker 1: have to refurbish that. Well, let's say the the hammer
Speaker 1: on the top of your robot with the spike that
Speaker 1: that pierces the arm or the other one and carries
Speaker 1: it into the buzz saw that's in the the arena floor. Um, well,
Speaker 1: you know the thing is it got stuck and the
Speaker 1: motor burned out or if they're gonna have to replace it. Well,
Speaker 1: this is expensive stuff you can't just jump in with, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, and when you've got things like pneumatics and
Speaker 1: hydraulics that may potentially be powering part of your robot,
Speaker 1: You've got lots of tubes that can suffer damage, and
Speaker 1: if there's a leak, then clearly your robot's not going
Speaker 1: to perform up to what the standard was before and
Speaker 1: you need to replace that in the middle. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it can be very expensive. And it's not like there
Speaker 1: are a lot of off the shelf parts for these robots,
Speaker 1: although there are companies that are that kind of catered
Speaker 1: to this this uh, this hobby now, and there are
Speaker 1: some places where you can buy stuff that has been
Speaker 1: specifically geared for use with robots. But especially in the
Speaker 1: early days, this was a lot of do it yourself,
Speaker 1: you know, building, taking various pieces from hardware stores and
Speaker 1: motors and and RF controllers and that kind of thing
Speaker 1: and making it all work together. Now it's really a
Speaker 1: feat of engineering to build one of these things. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't help to have a machine shop at
Speaker 1: your disposal. So if you can't find the pieces that
Speaker 1: you need, you can make them. Yeah, you can make
Speaker 1: a custom built robot. Well they're all custom built, but
Speaker 1: you can make one where it has unique parts that
Speaker 1: you would not find anywhere else. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: the competition as in itself. Sure, because I'm sorry, Oh no,
Speaker 1: go ahead. So so let's say you you do have
Speaker 1: a few thousand sitting around you want to go ahead
Speaker 1: and give it a try. Um, first of all, it
Speaker 1: would help to go to the battle bots website to
Speaker 1: learn more about the competition. Now, on the on the website,
Speaker 1: you'll find the rules that you need to adhere to
Speaker 1: It's not anything goes. You really have to abide by
Speaker 1: a certain set of rules of those specifications. Yep. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you need to find out what's going on. You need
Speaker 1: to find out when the competitions are going to be.
Speaker 1: It would help to become immersed in the community, learn
Speaker 1: a little bit more about Maybe there's a regional competition
Speaker 1: you could go to to try your robot out, and
Speaker 1: then you need to start thinking about the kind of
Speaker 1: robot you want to build. UM. But let's sticking with
Speaker 1: the competition. So you go to a competition and there
Speaker 1: are several rounds. You're given a pit area sort of
Speaker 1: like a race car might at a at a race,
Speaker 1: where you can set up your shops. So you've got
Speaker 1: all your parts for your robot. You've got your robot itself. Uh.
Speaker 1: This gives you a place to put your tools in
Speaker 1: your parts and do any necessary maintenance or tuning or UH.
Speaker 1: If you've got a switch that goes from mayme to kill,
Speaker 1: this is where you flip that switch and and you
Speaker 1: you are allowed to have a pit crew. Though your
Speaker 1: pit crew has to be a certain size. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: there's no size limit on the team that uh, that
Speaker 1: you used to build your robot. In fact, you can
Speaker 1: have a team of one if you like, yeah, or
Speaker 1: you could have a team of an entire campus if
Speaker 1: you really want to college campus, it could be that big.
Speaker 1: But your pit crew, of course cannot be big. Now
Speaker 1: there are several divisions. Um there's a high school division,
Speaker 1: in a college division, and the pro division, which is
Speaker 1: I don't think necessarily you're a professional robot builder, but
Speaker 1: I think they mean any age group, right, and uh,
Speaker 1: you can you can even get sponsorships, which helps for
Speaker 1: that expensive part of the game of playing this game.
Speaker 1: There are two basic variations on robots recognized in battle Bots.
Speaker 1: There are non walking robots, so essentially anything that uses
Speaker 1: wheels or treadmills, that kind of thing treads or snakes
Speaker 1: along the four snakes along the floor. Yeah, anything that
Speaker 1: is not is not actually lifting a leg and putting
Speaker 1: it down in order to move, uh, that is considered
Speaker 1: a non walking robot. And the weight designations for those um.
Speaker 1: And if you are competing at the high school or
Speaker 1: college level, your non walking robot can weigh a maximum
Speaker 1: of one pounds. If you're a professional, that goes up
Speaker 1: to two hundred twenty pounds, so the walking robots also
Speaker 1: called stop butts, uh those that they can get a
Speaker 1: little heavier, So in high school or college competitions it
Speaker 1: can be up to a hundred sixty pounds and for
Speaker 1: a professional whopping three hundred pounds, So you can have
Speaker 1: a three hundred pounds stomp robot if you are competing
Speaker 1: on a professional battle bots team. Now and a little scary.
Speaker 1: The the whole goal here, I mean we we've alluded
Speaker 1: to it quite a bit, but the whole goal here
Speaker 1: is that you you face off against an opponent. You
Speaker 1: know it's been in both cases. Your your robot is
Speaker 1: normally controlled by remote controls. Normally you would you would
Speaker 1: be under you know, each robot would be under human control,
Speaker 1: although there are rules for autonomous robots which we'll talk
Speaker 1: about in the second and they're pretty fun. But the
Speaker 1: idea here is that you go into a competition. There's
Speaker 1: a set amount of time for the round, and your
Speaker 1: goal is to disable the other robot within that time,
Speaker 1: or to inflict more damage or show better strategy. You know,
Speaker 1: your your your rounds are you The round is judged
Speaker 1: on various criteria like how much damage did you inflict,
Speaker 1: how much damage damage did you receive, and what was
Speaker 1: your you know, how strategic was your attack. If you
Speaker 1: were running away the whole time, you're not gonna be
Speaker 1: judged very well. But if you if you are able
Speaker 1: to disable the other robot, or you inflict more damage
Speaker 1: and play a better game than the other team, then
Speaker 1: you would go on to the next round. So, uh,
Speaker 1: that's that's the general idea. Now we can get down
Speaker 1: into some more specifics, like what what constitutes your you know,
Speaker 1: your robots weaponry. There were some robots that the weapon
Speaker 1: was essentially the fact that the robot itself was shaped
Speaker 1: like a ramp. It was designed to scoot under the
Speaker 1: opposing robot and flip it over in the hopes that
Speaker 1: by turning a robot upside down you have rendered it
Speaker 1: useless because it wasn't designed to move upside down. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then that we saw a lot of robots early
Speaker 1: on that that was the basic design. It was just
Speaker 1: essentially a ramp. It might have a little wheel or
Speaker 1: a treadmill on the ramp to help propel the robot
Speaker 1: over it, you know, the the opposing robot over it,
Speaker 1: so it can flip it over and then we saw
Speaker 1: a lot of robots pop up that could work either
Speaker 1: right side up or upside down. So you know that
Speaker 1: that weapon is a useless but you're supposed to have
Speaker 1: some sort of weapon, right, That's right, that's it's a
Speaker 1: requirement that you do have at least one active weapon
Speaker 1: on on your body, and you can you can participate
Speaker 1: even if your weapon is disabled. I mean you could
Speaker 1: have a giant spike on the front of it and
Speaker 1: that that counts. Uh. But say you have a you know,
Speaker 1: an arm on your your bot and it doesn't move anymore,
Speaker 1: but you move on and you can't get it repaired. Well,
Speaker 1: as long as you still have the weapon attached to
Speaker 1: the bot, if I'm reading the rules correctly, it's still
Speaker 1: allowed to continue to compete it just maybe at a
Speaker 1: sincere or disadvantage the next round. Sure, let's see. I've
Speaker 1: I've seen a number of different kinds of bots. There
Speaker 1: are kinds, as I said before, that might have a
Speaker 1: saw built into them which attempt to uh to destroy
Speaker 1: pieces of the other body. I've seen um uh bots
Speaker 1: with a hammer or or a hatchet um as. If
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken, grant of MythBusters. Oh he's built several. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember the one that that that I saw of
Speaker 1: his was one of those that had a basically a
Speaker 1: spike that would come down and basically try to impale
Speaker 1: the other robot. They have that the wedges. I remember
Speaker 1: one that didn't have a weapon that would necessarily try
Speaker 1: to destroy the other bot, but would try to capture
Speaker 1: it so it could pick it up and and take
Speaker 1: it into the hazards, drop it off there and let
Speaker 1: the let the board do the rest. Yes, yes, um so,
Speaker 1: and and the box hazards included um saws that were
Speaker 1: mounted underneath the floor, so if your robot happened to
Speaker 1: pass over this basically the hole in the floor where
Speaker 1: the saws come up, the box might send the saws
Speaker 1: up through there and cut your robot. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: very much like an Indiana Jones movie type thing, like
Speaker 1: spikes could fly up out of the floor or not.
Speaker 1: When I say fly, I don't mean like they would
Speaker 1: actually be projectiles they did stop. Yeah, there was the
Speaker 1: spikes would pop up out of the floor or and
Speaker 1: the spikes wouldn't necessarily impale, but they would often overturn robots. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and there was a spike strip on the side now, uh,
Speaker 1: there wasn't any anything necessarily that would you know, it
Speaker 1: didn't pop out of the side of the floor, but
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't necessarily impale your robots. Say you just
Speaker 1: bumped it into there. Well you might think, if you've
Speaker 1: never seen this show, you might think, well, it's a
Speaker 1: big deal, right, Yeah, I can get away from that.
Speaker 1: Well not. If the other robot manages to wedge one
Speaker 1: of the spikes into a tread on your robot or
Speaker 1: hand escape, then you're a sitting duck. Yeah. One of
Speaker 1: the rules of battle Butts is that your robot must
Speaker 1: be able to move at minimum two ft per second
Speaker 1: in a straight line. And if your robot is at
Speaker 1: some point uh disabled enough where it's unable to move,
Speaker 1: like let's say it's just stuck moving in circles, then
Speaker 1: the round maybe ended prematurely, and you know, the victory
Speaker 1: given to the other robot because you know you at
Speaker 1: that point, really there's no way for you to to
Speaker 1: when unless the other robot suffers a failure, and in
Speaker 1: which case that's not kind of a hollow victory. Um.
Speaker 1: There there are certain things that are specifically not allowed. Yes,
Speaker 1: projectiles are not allowed unless they are tethered to the robot.
Speaker 1: I would assume this is probably a safety precaution because
Speaker 1: while the the battle box is enclosed, enclosed, and it's
Speaker 1: likely to protect you from a piece of flying shrapnel
Speaker 1: that might spin off of a robot during a collision,
Speaker 1: if you had a machine gun mounted on your battle bot,
Speaker 1: it probably would be you know, it could be depending
Speaker 1: on where you're using, strong enough to pierce the box
Speaker 1: and injure the the spectators outside. This is why I'm
Speaker 1: never allowed to compete. There's no fun in that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you can have a projectile if it is tethered
Speaker 1: to the robot, and the project the tether has to
Speaker 1: be eight feet or or less in length. Um, you
Speaker 1: cannot have anything that goes beyond that. You you are
Speaker 1: allowed to use covering weapons, So weapons that could cover
Speaker 1: a uh AN opponent, but they must have the covering
Speaker 1: must be either rigid or semi rigid, and the the
Speaker 1: attacking robot must be able to remove the cover at
Speaker 1: any time. So, in other words, you can have like
Speaker 1: a solid not a net, but like to say, like
Speaker 1: a little cage on a lever come down and and
Speaker 1: encapsulate an opponent, and then you drive your opponent into
Speaker 1: a pit. You could do that, but you could not
Speaker 1: shoot a net at a at a robot and then
Speaker 1: foul its wheels that way. In fact, you're not allowed
Speaker 1: to use any weapons that were specifically designed to foul
Speaker 1: a a a robot's wheels or treads just by getting
Speaker 1: tangled in there. So you couldn't drop like string or
Speaker 1: rope or um. They talk about. You can use balloons
Speaker 1: and air bags to push a robot, but you can't
Speaker 1: use them in such a way so that they come
Speaker 1: off your robot, deflate and then become a fouling hazard.
Speaker 1: Not intentionally anyway. Yeah, if it happens by accident, you
Speaker 1: you you know, that's that's another matter. Electro Magnets are
Speaker 1: there's a there's a very specific use, so you can
Speaker 1: you can have them mounted on your robot and use
Speaker 1: them that way, but they are not supposed to be
Speaker 1: designed to interfere with the radio frequency signal that's sent
Speaker 1: by the remote control and uh, you can't have like
Speaker 1: a cattle prode or uh, something that's going to essentially
Speaker 1: create an electromagnetic field that's going to be so powerful
Speaker 1: that it just causes a robot to you know, go
Speaker 1: down you can't do anything like that. Like, you know,
Speaker 1: that also destroys my plan for my e MP robot
Speaker 1: that was building. I can't do that anymore. And I
Speaker 1: was just about to figure out how I could do
Speaker 1: it without detonating a nuclear warhead. So I was so close.
Speaker 1: But um, you can't use flame or uh weapons that
Speaker 1: would obscure vision as um as a tactic. You can
Speaker 1: use the both of those things in what they call effects.
Speaker 1: But that's sort of like you guys, if you've ever
Speaker 1: watched professional wrestling and they announced the wrestler, and the
Speaker 1: wrestler comes down the ramp and they're all these pyro
Speaker 1: effects that go off and there's a big video playing
Speaker 1: in the background and maybe smoke is coming up. Um,
Speaker 1: you know that's all for the effect of him taking
Speaker 1: the stage or her taking the stage before the match.
Speaker 1: Same sort of thing. That's the idea is that, you know,
Speaker 1: like you have a little flame shooting out the back. Well,
Speaker 1: that's okay if it's just for the entrance or you know,
Speaker 1: a victory lap or something, but you can't use it
Speaker 1: as a weapon. Yeah, but there are things, there are
Speaker 1: reasons why you might not want to do that, including
Speaker 1: the fact that you might have a flammable material on board.
Speaker 1: Now you can't have an internal combustion engine powering your
Speaker 1: bought a motor. But the thing again is if, for example,
Speaker 1: the other bought severs your gas line or whatever it
Speaker 1: is that you're using for fuel, uh, and uh some
Speaker 1: spark catches it on fire, you may lose your entire bot. Uh,
Speaker 1: both bots might get lost in that, because, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: talking about a true flame hazard there. It's a I mean,
Speaker 1: by definition, it has to be a combustible liquid. I
Speaker 1: assume that they would stop the fight and someone would
Speaker 1: go in with a fire extinguisher to put it out,
Speaker 1: but not I would assume before it would do some damage. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: it's going to add to the weight. If you had
Speaker 1: a smoke machine and a you know, little flamethrower on
Speaker 1: there for the effects, then that's how many idly a
Speaker 1: couple of pounds um. And you know, some bots are
Speaker 1: going to want to stay light and some are going
Speaker 1: to want to be heavier, depending on the kind of
Speaker 1: attack that that you're delivering. So you really have to
Speaker 1: be very strategic about what you add to your bot. UM.
Speaker 1: Some bots themselves are weapons to UM. Some of my
Speaker 1: favorites are are what they call spin bots UM. A
Speaker 1: couple of them were made from an upside down walk um,
Speaker 1: which doesn't sound very you know, scary, but if you
Speaker 1: mount things on the outside of these bots and you're
Speaker 1: going at a certain number of RPMs, when you come
Speaker 1: into the say really thin titanium coating of another bot,
Speaker 1: it may rip the outside of that thing right off. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these these things like I've seen somewhere. It was essentially
Speaker 1: like a lawnmower arm that would spin around on the
Speaker 1: top of it. And yeah, usually you have a shell
Speaker 1: on the outside of the robot that is capable of
Speaker 1: spinning in one direction or the other. Uh, and then
Speaker 1: the wheels and everything are independent of that, so they
Speaker 1: you know, the spinning motion isn't what propels the robot
Speaker 1: across the floor. It's just another element to the robot. Um.
Speaker 1: It's a very interesting type of weapon. Yeah, it's tricky too,
Speaker 1: because I mean it's going to throw off. The way
Speaker 1: the robot handles is just just from the force that's
Speaker 1: generated from the spinning attack. The impact usually causes both
Speaker 1: robots to go off in a different direction. It looks
Speaker 1: like when a pinball hits a like a bumper and
Speaker 1: a pinball machine. It's just like bing and then it
Speaker 1: just flies across the floor. Um, the I shall will
Speaker 1: point out this point when I when I mentioned that
Speaker 1: they're independent. Uh, each team is allowed to operators. You
Speaker 1: can have two people operating the robots. So you could
Speaker 1: have one person who's essentially steering the robot and driver driver,
Speaker 1: and another person would be the the one operating the weapons.
Speaker 1: And usually you would have two separate controllers working on
Speaker 1: two separate frequencies. Uh. That brings me to another weapon
Speaker 1: that you can't use. You can't use any kind of
Speaker 1: weapon that would interfere with your opponents radio frequencies. So
Speaker 1: no fair jamming the other guy. Yeah, which is yet
Speaker 1: again all the things that I would plan. Like, here's
Speaker 1: the brilliance of my plan is you immediately disabled the
Speaker 1: other robot before it even has a chance to do anything,
Speaker 1: and then you just go on wump up on it.
Speaker 1: Actually you wouldn't even have to do that. You could
Speaker 1: just move in a straight line. The other robot can't move,
Speaker 1: it's just you know, it's disqualified. It has to be
Speaker 1: able to show that it can still move in order
Speaker 1: to be considered viable. Um. Well, even if you don't
Speaker 1: consider that playing dirty, you have to take into account
Speaker 1: the effect it has in the spectators. When the other
Speaker 1: robot doesn't even move, it's no fun, and when both
Speaker 1: robots don't get into it a little bit fun. I'm
Speaker 1: looking at winning dude. Yeah, okay, so um, but here's
Speaker 1: some other stuff that you can do that or that
Speaker 1: that's kind of cool. You can have a jumping robot. Okay,
Speaker 1: you are, Um, you're jumping robot can only there's a
Speaker 1: limit on how high robots are allowed to jump within
Speaker 1: battle bots. That limit is six feet. I was telling
Speaker 1: Chris earlier, if I saw a robot jump six ft
Speaker 1: in the air straight up, I would immediately turn around
Speaker 1: and walk out of the building for fear of my
Speaker 1: life because I don't know. There's something about jumping robot
Speaker 1: that just scares me. Um, there is. Uh. You can
Speaker 1: have a hovercraft as a robot. You could you could
Speaker 1: build your robot could propel itself via the same method
Speaker 1: as a hovercraft. You are not allowed to have powered
Speaker 1: flight or jets or rockets. Though yet again I knew
Speaker 1: you were going to say that, so um also also
Speaker 1: lighten sound. Um, you can't have any device on your
Speaker 1: robot that is meant to blind your opponent, your human opponent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't have like a like a fog light attached
Speaker 1: to your robot that you turn on whenever it's facing
Speaker 1: your opponents. Um And, you can't. You can't use lasers
Speaker 1: either on the outside. You can use lasers on the
Speaker 1: inside if they're used to operate your robot in any way,
Speaker 1: that's fine. You just can't have any exposed lasers that
Speaker 1: are meant to be in effect or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Um And, as we said, you can use flames and
Speaker 1: smoke for just effect purposes. If you are using flames,
Speaker 1: you can only use propane or butane as the fuel,
Speaker 1: and it has to be in gas form. It cannot
Speaker 1: shoot it as liquid or gel, because obviously that would
Speaker 1: be much more dangerous. Um And I was mentioning the
Speaker 1: autonomous robots. You are allowed to build an autonomous robot. Now,
Speaker 1: an autonomous robot acts on its own right. It has
Speaker 1: its own ability to perform actions and and on a
Speaker 1: certain level, make decisions and act upon them. But the
Speaker 1: rule for autonomous robots is that when the match starts,
Speaker 1: it has to be under human control. You have to
Speaker 1: be able to switch it to autonomous modes. So essentially
Speaker 1: it's like you know autopilot, right, you push a button
Speaker 1: or whatever and it switches to autonomous UH mode, and
Speaker 1: then you have to be able to have the ability
Speaker 1: to butt in and take it over manually if needed.
Speaker 1: So as long as it follows those rules, you're allowed
Speaker 1: to have an autonomous robot. That's actually pretty cool. I
Speaker 1: don't remember them doing that back when I was watching
Speaker 1: the show, and unfortunately I haven't seen any of the
Speaker 1: competition since then. UM, if you happen to be in Miami,
Speaker 1: Florida on February, that doesn't give you much time. Based
Speaker 1: on when this podcast is going to publish, you can
Speaker 1: you can see this year's competition at the Coconut Grove
Speaker 1: Expo Center. UM. So getting back to the the actual format.
Speaker 1: So you have you've decided to build a robot. You've
Speaker 1: made all the tough choices. What kind of weapon you want?
Speaker 1: What do you want to build it out of? You've
Speaker 1: had your metallurgically UH gifted friends help you with the
Speaker 1: choice between titanium and steel. Um do you really want
Speaker 1: to use lex hand for the outside? I don't know. Um,
Speaker 1: you've built your bot, you've got extra parts, you've got
Speaker 1: extra tools, you've got your buddies to help you with it.
Speaker 1: You show up at the tournament and you when you enter,
Speaker 1: you're in a tournament grid. So you go up for
Speaker 1: your first bout, and basically it's if you win, you continue, uh,
Speaker 1: you lose, and you stick around and help people out
Speaker 1: because the only people who can share parts, according to
Speaker 1: the rules are people who are already out of the competition.
Speaker 1: So say you've won, but your motor burned out that
Speaker 1: you need for your your actuator arm for your weapon, Well,
Speaker 1: somebody from a previous round or from another competition can
Speaker 1: loan you a motor to use in your bot if
Speaker 1: you don't have one handy, but that person has to
Speaker 1: have already had their robot eliminated. Um. That's why it's
Speaker 1: always good to carry extras of these parts because you're
Speaker 1: gonna need them. Um. But basically, as you progress up
Speaker 1: the ladder, uh, you know eventually they crown a winner.
Speaker 1: Now that this is done in several classes, just like
Speaker 1: you would see in human boxing matches, they're weight classes, right,
Speaker 1: And now that there are in the competitions more robust
Speaker 1: you have high school, college, and pro levels and weight
Speaker 1: classes within those levels, so you don't have a really
Speaker 1: tiny spin bot going up against a you know, a
Speaker 1: crusher buzz saw from you know, the top weight class.
Speaker 1: I have them matched evenly, and and they give out
Speaker 1: awards based on that, um, you know, prize money. There's
Speaker 1: usually something I think that they try to give people.
Speaker 1: I don't know that anyone has become rich being a
Speaker 1: battle bot owner. Yeah, it's really an engineering contest more
Speaker 1: than anything else. Yeah, I think it's I think it's
Speaker 1: more for fun than anything else and bragging rights, um,
Speaker 1: unless you're on the show's space, in which case it's
Speaker 1: a matter of honor. Yes, But um, I think more
Speaker 1: than that though, from what the research I've done since I,
Speaker 1: as I said, I hadn't watched the show in many years,
Speaker 1: I was sort about of it, it seems like there's
Speaker 1: been a real community spring up to teach people how
Speaker 1: to build robots, you know, for hobbyists. Um, there are
Speaker 1: people who make parts for competitions. Now that that weren't
Speaker 1: I mean people take used to take uh you know,
Speaker 1: chainsaws and other parts off the shelf for machine things themselves.
Speaker 1: There these you don't have to be a complete uh
Speaker 1: robotics expert to do this kind of thing. You can
Speaker 1: really get into it and ease yourself in more than
Speaker 1: you used to be able to. And I think there's
Speaker 1: a real um community of people where they just hang
Speaker 1: out and share ideas now where there there probably wasn't before.
Speaker 1: So over the span of uh, just a few years,
Speaker 1: you know, this is the kind of activity that sprung up.
Speaker 1: And I think competitions like this and and first the
Speaker 1: first robotics competition, you know, it's it encourages people to
Speaker 1: learn more about it, and younger people are getting involved
Speaker 1: in it too, so uh, congratulations to them. I hope
Speaker 1: it will make a return to TV. I really miss
Speaker 1: watching the show. It was so much fun. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. And again, you know, nobody people are
Speaker 1: out a lot of money when they lose, but watching
Speaker 1: the robots take each other apart, which is so much fun.
Speaker 1: And it's great to teach the basics of engineering robotics
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. And you often will see things
Speaker 1: that show that people are thinking outside the box, so
Speaker 1: to speak, and that uh that possibly have have applications
Speaker 1: beyond what you know, what some might see is just
Speaker 1: kind of a hobby, so it's simar about Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: So if any of you guys have any comments about
Speaker 1: battle bots, maybe you built one and you would like
Speaker 1: to tell us about it, I'd love to hear that, definitely,
Speaker 1: let us know you can. You can contact us on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter. Are handled there is tech stuff hs W,
Speaker 1: or you can email us. That email address is text
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com and Chris and
Speaker 1: I will taught to you again really soon. For more
Speaker 1: on this and bathrooms of other topics, visit how stuff
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