What is Inside a Winning Battle Bot

[heavy drum music]

[clangs violently]

[crowd laughing]

You've heard about the RoboGames,

where robots of various kinds compete to

smash each other, grind each other up, flip each other

and just push each other around the ring,

well let's take a look

at how some of these machines are made.

This is UC San Diego's competitor in the RoboGames.

It's a one hundred and twenty pound

chunk of steel and motors called the Kraken,

and it's distinguishing feature

is this plate of abrasion resistant steel here.

It's so hard, they had to cut it with a plasma torch.

We're competing in the middleweight class,

so a hundred and twenty pounds.

There's also the heavyweight,

which is two hundred and twenty

and the super heavyweight which is three hundred and forty.

[Allen] So inside, we have four scooter motors,

we have a four wheel drive,

the chains are hidden inside these,

and then we have the linear actuator,

which basically extends in and out,

which will when it pulls back

it'll pivot the shield upwards more

so it'll lift the shield.

[Daniel] ...and the batteries, the leads,

will go in the back right here.

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What's your robot called?

It's called Bad Dog.

Bad Dog?

Bad Dog, yeah, because it tears things up.

[John] We get this aluminum disc with a titanium blade

spinning at about thirty-five hundred RPM.

[Dylan] Okay.

[John] Very scary,

but whatever it hits, it tears into it.

We wanted an active weapon,

because active weapons are so much more fun to watch

[Dylan] More exciting, yeah.

than things like a wedge.

So, rather than defense we went with a type of [interrupted]

Wedge is the only design that really is affected

against a spinner robot, because the wedge will,

it'll just start skipping across it,

then the wedge can bring it over to the wall,

the spinner will hit the wall and break itself.

Those big spinner robots, there's still a few around,

but not very many anymore,

because the wedges were so effective.

So Marco, you're from Brazil, right? From Rio?

Yes. Rio De Janeiro.

Okay, you've come a really long way to the RoboGames.

Yeah. We started competing in two thousand six here,

RoboGames, and it's really worth it.

[Marco] This is Toro Light, toro means bull in Portuguese.

and it's a lightweight,

[Dylan] Yeah.

and it spins this round at about six thousand RPM.

And what happens is that when an opponent gets close to it,

it's thrown up in the air.

[clangs violently]

So you have to make your robot

robust enough to take big hits,

fly through the air, six, seven feet, land on the ground,

and still drive. That's number one.

And then come up with a weapon

that you can try to fight everybody else,

and that's the hard part.

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[clangs violently]

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