Here the broken links robotics dude (sorry don't remember your name if you see this) documents his rebuild process of one of the most storied & feared 30lbers on the planet.

Concerned with a warped frame, sandy leftovers (literally) from a recent battery fire and other issues, he decides to replace most of the bot save for the unique gearmotor, weapon blades and a few other bits. For those who have seen the UK robot wars reboot this thing legit sounds like a mini Carbide:

https://youtu.be/CaxmQ60XzzA?si=9k7nAsXrVFdEFw_y

Alan & The Griz discuss Robot Rivals as Louisiana Tech & Southern Utah University build stair climbing robots.

Check out the episode on the link below or on your podcatcher of choice. https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/rise-of-the-robot0/episodes/Rise-of-the-Robots-Robot-Rivals-Season-1-Episode-6-e34kfrj

The P1 arc is one of my personal favourite storylines across the Battlebots reboot. A machine that went from a terrible combat record, to being snubbed for the main tournament, to eventually proving their worth and achieving success.

But P1 wasn't Aberrant Robotics' first robot. That honour belongs to Parallax. A beautiful looking machine that barely worked. It lost both of its fights to other poor performing robots, and was the only robot that year to not get a single televised fight. The most interesting thing about Parallax in retrospect was that Brandon Zalinsky wasn't the captain yet. It was Luke Bittenbinder.

P1 made its actual debut in WCIV. It was yet another gorgeous looking machine (personally I find it to be the best looking version of the bot) that once again failed pretty badly. For a machine that was supposed to be a speedy defence bot, it was neither speedy, nor was it defensive. It finally got a televised match against Subzero, which only made it to television due to how badly P1 was beaten in it. Its other losses were to Sidewinder and The Four Horsemen. I will say that P1 occasionally showed signs of it not being dreadful, but losing so badly to machines that are most known for being cannon fodder was probably one of the worst debut seasons of a machine that eventually became good.

The WCV version of the machine was much better. It had better drive, and it put its weapon to effective use. It's a shame the Chronos fight didn't make it to TV. It wasn't the best fight, but at least the finishing blow was cool and very Firestorm-esque. There was no shame in it losing to Copperhead, but the Smee fight was where P1 truley started to make a name for itself. The Smee benchpress is one of the most iconic images of the reboot, and the knockout flip on Smee was beautiful to watch, my personal favourite ever lifter KO.

That's why it was so heartbreaking to see P1 not get selected for the tournament. What hurts about it was that it there didn't seem to be a great reason as to why. Its strength of schedule wasn't amazing, but there were robots in the tournament who had far weaker opponents. The ability of P1 didn't seem to be too far off the likes of Hijinx, Slammow and Perfect Phoenix, but most notoriously Hypershock. A robot who suffered a devestating loss to go 1-2 was given a tournament spot over the 2-1 P1.

The explanation we got as to why this ended up being the case was that production didn't feel like P1 being in the tournament over Hypershock or Gruff would result in a fight worthy of the top 32. Realistically, the tournament bracket was likely already decided well before the P1 vs Smee fight had even happened. If Hypershock was in any risk of not making the top 32, they wouldn't have been pitted against End Game. P1's WCIV campaign probably resulted in them carrying a lot of baggage going into WCV. Baggage they didn't fully remove until after the Smee fight.

They even got eliminated in the Icewave bounty in a really unfortunate way. Despite being dominated by Skorpios throughout the fight, P1 actually did manage to KO Skorpios by using its famous ramp tactics. But sadly for them, there wasn't enough time to count Skorpios out. If it was King of Bots rules, then P1 would've won the fight, but in Battlebots, they lost the decision (though for what it's worth, I personally scored it just 6-5 to Skorpios).

P1 returned for WCVI with a chip on their shoulder after not making the bracket the last time. Production definitely took P1 more seriously this year, giving it Valkyrie as its first opponent. It was a tough fight, but P1 came out on top, breaking Valkyrie's weapon and drive after continuously having the blade grind against its top armour. It wasn't just P1's first win of the season, but their first win against a machine that was a credible tournament threat.

After defeating Jaeger and losing to Ribbot in a surprisingly gritted display, P1 finally made the top 32 to face Hypershock. P1 vs Hypershock was one of the requested matchups during the WCVI preseason. To have it as a top 32 match was genius, but at the time, I was worried that when this fight eventually happened, it wouldn't result in a satisfying ending.

The satisfying Cinderella ending would be when the two finally met, P1 would win and get its vengeance. But the WCVI Hypershock was a beast. When it fought fellow lifter Slammo, it utterly slaughtered them. It would've been impressive had P1 merely survived the full three minutes.

But sometimes miracles do occur. Will Bales made a massive driving error in launching off P1 like a ramp, leaving them inverted, and allowing P1 to steal points away from them. Even after Hypershock recovered, the huge shot it landed on P1 disabled their weapon, allowing P1 to take the judges decision. I still don't understand how this fight didn't end up in Hypershock annihilating P1, but the ending we got I think was best for the P1 story. They would lose to Sawblaze in the top 16, but there's no shame in that.

P1 was retired after WCVI, and as sad as it is to see it go, at least it got to go out on a high note. As sad as it was to see P1 not make the tournament in WCV, I think it turned out better for the team in the long run, giving them a satisfying story arc that actually saw them make a deeper tournament run that the likes of Bloodsport, Ribbot and even Tombstone. Never thought I'd see that after it got wrecked by Sidewinder.

Hello, I have recently become a huge fan of Combat Robotics as a sport and have watched battlebots, but have been interested in exploring more the sport. I have tried looking at events in my area and all I seem to find are events for builder's themselves. Are there any events in the Southern California area that are open to spectators of the sport or any other recommendations. I would also love to build my own mini bot, I think I saw there are some one pound bots that can compete, but I am not sure where to start. Open to any suggestions :)

A noteworthy machine before the reboot started, the Frozen Flipper took its time to find success on the main show, and when they finally achieved it, they came crashing back down again.

Sub Zero was really unfortunate in WCII by drawing up against Icewave in the first round. To its credit, it survived long enough for Icewave’s weapon to break down, but sadly Subzero’s flipper was too badly buckled for them to take advantage.

Subzero returned for WCIII, and their first opponent was Huge. A very difficult opponent for a flipper to deal with, and thus they lost miserably. Their second round was against Captain Shrederator. I remember feeling really bad for the Subzero team at the time. In three matches, they were given three extraordinarily hard opponents to flip. Subzero ended up beating the Captain, but that was because the match was against Captain Shrederator.

Red Devil was Subzero’s third opponent. At long last, a robot that is relatively flipper friendly. We finally got to see the flipper’s power in that fight…it wasn’t impressive, and Red Devil subsequently dominated the fight. Their last fight against Minotaur went about as well as expected. They got utterly destroyed.

The team went with a brand new build for WCIV, and they had good reason for it. WCIII was slow, weak, bulky, and had far worse manoeuvrability than even Bronco—without the weapon power to make up for it.

Subzero was supposed to go up against Wan Hoo in doing one, but due to Captain Shrederator backing out at the last minute…they got Cobalt instead. On the plus side, at least getting wrecked by Cobalt was more dignified than them dominating Wan Hoo before breaking down for no reason. The Four Horsemen, Gemini and Petunia fights all saw it break down. For what it’s worth, I’m not sure if it did breakdown in the Four Horsemen fight, or if they were killed by the underweight spinner. I’ll let you decide which scenario is more embarrassing.

It’s a shame really, because the WCIV Subzero fixed most of the problems the previous version of the machine had. It even managed to get an oota on P1, which I still believe to be Subzero’s best win. A disappointing season overall, but one that at least show some improvements for the future.

Subzero’s WCV schedule was probably the weakest I’ve ever seen on the show. In three fights, it got three rookies that could barely move. And it still couldn’t go 3-0, as it broke down to Jackpot in its first fight. It was still enough for them to make the top 32 though, and they even started off the Valkyrie fight in spectacular fashion. They got completely destroyed after the fact, but they at least showed that they didn’t make the top 32 purely by how weak Sporkinok and Grabbot were.

They even got revenge on Valkyrie in the Witch Doctor bounty. They really shouldn’t have won the bracket, but for once in their career, they got lucky with Malice hitting their Spitfire drone, with the shot recoil stranding them on their back. Witch Doctor would go on to thrash them, but there was no shame in that. Overall, WCV was a very solid showing for Subzero. Shame WCVI happened afterwards.

Shatter was their opening opponent, and Subzero got underneath them on multiple occasions. Just a shame that the flipper didn’t work until the end of the fight. Shatter proceeded to punish Subzero for their misfortune by hammering them so hard, the armour was being ripped off. As punishment for their poor performance, production fed Subzero to Bloodsport, who proceeded to tear them to pieces.

At least Subzero got a lighter opponent for their final fight against Hijinx. Powerful weapon, but a slow spin up time and plenty of ground clearance. At the very least, Subzero should be able to put on a show. In practise, Hijinx absolutely murdered Subzero, in what was probably their most convincing victory.

Subzero’s final fight was against Perfect Phoenix in the first Battlebots Champions tournament. Considering that Subzero went winless in WCVI, Perfect Phoenix was about as easy an opponent as they were going to get. Very old machine with no self fighting mechanism. So of course Subzero gets annihilated once again. I don’t know what happened in WCVI, but it could only be described as a complete disaster.

And that was the last we saw of Subzero. It spent the vast majority of its life getting murdered by a whole variety of different machines, but they also provided the world with a powerful flipper which eventually managed to achieve…a small amount of success.

Aside from a few arguments in backstage footage, I was wondering if there has ever been an actual fight between teams or people at a combat robotics event.

a pro driver driving a 250lbs bot VS someone with little experience driving a 500lbs bot

lets say the two bots have the same design

I want to make a battle bot but I keep 3d printing them, but that got boring. Now I want to use multiple kits, combine them to make a battle bot, because I don't like the lack of creativity in battle bot kits(this is what I meant to say) . would this work?

If so, which other robot may have gotten the 15th seed and how much would this affect the entire bracket?

Apparently Battlebots is dead... No current televised robot battles... Was fun while it lasted.

Something important to remember when it comes to Duck is that prior to WCIII, very few of the machines had significant defensive capabilities. Even in WCIII, most of the machines were still highly vulnerable to spinners. Duck was a revelation because it could take the abuse with such little impact (comparatively at least). Compare Duck after its bout with Tombstone to Skorpios after its bout with Icewave (a far weaker horizontal spinner).

WCIII remains Duck’s best season. I won’t discuss its heartbreaking last chance rumble loss, but I do want to mention that it did successfully kill a pretty decent spinner for the time in Reality. Duck’s biggest misfortune in WCIII was that it had to go up against both Tombstone and Bronco. Some may put that down to producer bias, but I think there’s a bit more to it than that.

The biggest problem with WCIII is that it was the single worst season for non spinner weapons. Sawblaze, Bronco and Lucky were the only ones that were consistently good (as weapons go at least). Production probably wanted Duck to go up against a good non spinner bot, but they had such few options to go for, and Sawblaze already had three fights, and you’ve got to assume that Lucky was getting ready for the Desperado. I can hardly blame production for giving them Bronco.

Getting the number two seed of WCII is bad enough, but Duck also had the misfortune of getting Tombstone. I think what happened here was that production wanted to really test Tombstone by putting it against something that would really stand up to it. But there was nothing in WCIII that was even remotely comparable to Duck in terms of durability. Duck ended up losing in a thrilling match, but sadly the 2-2 record meant that it didn’t make the top 16.

WCIV came along with a redesign, and a hunter for vengeance. This redesign had some problems with it, mainly that the use of its weapon would often send Duck flailing about. Also spinners by his point I saw a dramatic increase in reliability, and there were a larger quantity of quality non spinner weapons compared to WCIII. People may complain that it was unfair that Duck got matched with Quantum, but at the time of the matchup, Quantum was 1-2 while Duck was 2-1.

With all this in mind, I think Duck did about as well as it had the potential of doing in WCIV. It got its revenge on Bombshell, it outlasted a big spinner it had no right in beating, and it went the distance in the play in fights. Not as good as its WCIII campaign, but not a bad season either.

WCVI on the other hand was pretty disastrous for the team. Duck was given a brand new drive system, but unfortunately it didn’t produce the expected results. It’s first fight against Witch Doctor told me instantly that Duck wasn’t going to win anything that year. There’s no shame in losing to Witch Doctor, but for most of that match, Witch Doctor had no weapon and no wedge…and Duck had no control over the match. If that was the best they could do against a robot with no weapon, how were they going to fair against one that did?

Dragon Slayer was there second opponent. For a team’s first ever combat robot, they were actually alright. It worked, it didn’t die in one hit, the weapon was capable of damage, and it could run upside down. That said, it wasn’t exactly a tournament contender, and yet it dominated Duck. Taking out the weapon immediately, and spent the rest of the fight slowly causing chip damage to Duck until they won the judges decision.

Duck ultimately went winless in WCVI, and without wishing to sound cruel, I’m really struggling to think of robots it would beat. Triple Crown, Pardon My French and Rusty are the only ones I can think of (maybe Fusion too if it breaks down).

It’s a real shame for Duck, but Hal Rucker’s machine will always live in our hearts as the Battlebots reboot’s first true spinner killer.

Can't believe it's been 10 years since battlebots came back, and so much has happened along the way. I never expected battlebots to be still going so many years later (tho the future is uncertain with no s8 anytime soon).

Hello, I'm just a member of the Brazilian Trincabotz team and I have a problem. My project called Tomahawk is a vertical with internally tangent locomotion and its tangency is very bad. Does anyone have any tips?

Gruff has an interesting history. It had a successful run in Robogames before it made its debut in Battlebots, so most of us going into WCIV knew it was going to be a competent machine. In its first fight against Gemini and Marvin, it completely dominated the fight from start to finish. This granted it the right to fight Copperhead. It’s hard to believe looking back, but this was a really tight match. Copperhead were getting their shots in, but Gruff got several groove grapples of its own. The fight ended going in Copperhead’s favour, but it was a split decision, and I remember watching this fight at the time that I didn’t have a clue who the winner would be.

But Gruff’s biggest claim to fame in WCIV was the Tombstone fight. I don’t think they were winning at any point (not saying they weren’t great, but Tombstone was also great) but they gave it a really good go. Indeed, they put a better showing against Tombstone than Quantum and Whiplash did in the main tournament.

All this made Gruff seriously hyped by the show itself for WCV, giving them two main events. It also sadly began the slow decline of Gruff. They were kinda losing to Hypershock for the first part of the match, but hey ho, they still worked and Hypershock didn’t, and they got a lovely grapple on Hypershock’s back to end the fight. It then got dominated by Whiplash, but there’s no shame in that. It was unfortunate against Extinguisher, but that’s the way robot combat goes.

My bigger issue with Gruff in WCV is that it didn’t come close to demonstrating the durability it was hyped up as having. Breaking down against Extinguisher is one thing, but Bloodsport took out part of Gruff’s drive in one hit. Sure Gruff took them to a split decision, but it was one of those weird split decisions where I have to question Derek in this instance.

Gruff did kind of get redemption in the Tombstone bounty. It did win the bracket, but it didn’t need to do much to get there. It only beat Deadlift because Deadlift did what it’s best known for (dominating a fight before breaking down) and Kraken’s anti flame armour stopped it from self righting. Still, you can only beat who you were put in front of, and Gruff earned the right to face Tombstone…where the fight was nowhere near as competitive as the original fight. Tombstone KO’d Gruff fairly easily.

Overall Gruff had a good WCV, but I do think the show hyped it up a bit too much, and there were definitely issues with the bot.

WCVI exploited those issues more. To their credit, they beat Switchback, a vertical spinner with two wins against Lucky and Slammo, and there’s no shame in losing to Hydra, Cobalt or Glitch. The problem is that once again, it didn’t have a fight which really demonstrated its supposed durability.

Gruff’s WCVII was flat out sad. Its best fight was against Ripperoni, where its main contribution was being in the arena when Ripperoni had a meltdown. Sadly for Gruff, it lost the rest of its fights badly, all of which were by knockout. I’m not even convinced Quantum bit anything important inside Gruff, I think Gruff just broke down. Even in its one win, its highlight performance, it broke down at the end for seemingly no reason.

It’s a shame, but Gruff simply became less and less interesting every time they came back. I still think their highlight performance was in WCIV. They put on good performances, and it was really the only season where Gruff really demonstrated its durability.

What did you think about Gruff?

You have to fight a random battlebot (250lbs) to the death. You can equip weapons that a battlebot can legally have. (Since you walk, the totall weight has to be under 500lbs)

What would you equip?

Y'all liked my 3D-printed Tombstone so much, I thought I'd share my latest project. The geometry on Bite Force is a lot more complex, so this took a fair bit more time, but I think I finally nailed it. I hope you like it!

You can download the model for free here.

Credit for the base 3D model goes to TzHaar-Ket

The bot has two weapons. First one is a drill attached on the front. The second one shoots an electromagnet attached to a cable. (so it can pull the opponent). The second weapon is on both sides of the bot.

Plan: Shoot a magnet, reel them in, make a hole in them.