Heavyweight Battlebot!

Combat robotics teaches you how to build optimized, robust, repairable systems. These challenges intensify as you advance into larger weight classes and begin competing against more experienced and stronger competitors. The highest level of combat robotics competition is the television show Battlebots. My 8 teammates and I had the opportunity to compete on the show in 2019. We have competed in every season since.

2019 Season

Using what we knew from fighting in lower weight classes and seeking advice from veteran teams like Huge, Valkyrie, and Sawblaze. Ribbot has a modular weapon system, giving us the ability to swap them out depending on our opponent, giving us a competitive edge. The first season we went to the event with a 1 lifter module, 2 wedge modules, 1 horizontal spinner, 2 vertical spinner modules and 2 driving chassis. Each module weighed ~110 lb and ~120 lb driving chassis. (~20 lb went into the frog head and legs) Several of us took time off of school to manufacture all of these parts necessary for these assemblies and the additional spares.

Our debut season, we finished with a winning record of 3-2 but did not make it out of the round-robin stage of the competition.

2020 Season

After competing with the robot in 2019, we took what we learned and improved the robot significantly. We decided to focus our effort on cutting weight and improving the modules we primarily used our debut season: the vertical and horizontal spinners. Switching from casting the frog out of foam to vacuum forming, gave us nearly 20 lb of weight back to allocate elsewhere in the robot. After experiencing a few critical failures in the vertical module (including shattering a 1.75” diameter steel weapon shaft), we redesigned and remanufactured almost every part of the assembly. We modified the horizontal, redoing the transmission. We also became the first battlebots with live telemetry to give us live updates on the status of the robot during fights.

In our second season, we earned a spot in the final tournament and managed to make it to the top 8.

2021 Season

We knew from the previous season that we could not improve much by staying with the previous seasons’ robot. It was time for an overhaul. We combined the vertical and wedge module into one, allowing us to focus our design efforts there. We redesigned the horizontal module to have the disc farther forward, making it easier to hit opponents. We also changed over all of the weapon power system from brushed motors to IPMs. This change led to us becoming the highest voltage robot to ever compete on the show at over 250v.

This season has yet to fully air, but you can watch it weekly on the Discovery Channel! You can check our current fight record here.

Some of the smaller projects I did for Ribbot.