Check out this fight in BattleBots World Championship VII (marked “Season 8” on most platforms), Episode 19.
We have now arrived at “The Hard Part” of Battlebots. The part of the season where you’re fighting multiple times per day.
With a win in the Round of 8 over Witch Doctor, we realized that World Championship 7 was crossing from “a great year” into something even more magical. To be fighting for a spot in the finals, after the last 2 seasons HUGE had, served to show how far we had come and how much we had learned.
Copperhead would be our third opponent in a row that was a very short, compact, and highly-competitive vertical spinner. After fighting through a wide variety of opponents during World Championship 7 just to get here, being able to successively hone our strategy against the hyper-competitive vertical spinners was a really great opportunity. For lack of a better term, we had talked a lot of smack for a long time about the small-vertical-spinner type of opponent. And in our last two fights, HUGE lost the use of its weapon due to getting punched very hard upwards (MadCatter) and hitting a very solid object (Witch Doctor).
As for Copperhead, looking at the bot, they appear to have two main design goals:
Punch things upwards very hard
Be a very solid object for people to hit
Crap.
Copperhead was on a roll of winning fights this season with their durability, specifically against Bloodsport, End Game, and Riptide. It is designed and built for an opponent to hit it hard enough that their robot kills itself, and to never itself die in the process. Given our failures with the weapon motors against Witch Doctor, we were very wary of this match. If HUGE were to lose its weapon against such a durable opponent (presumably before doing too much damage), we would surely lose the impending judge’s decision. We’ve come too far to go out because we break ourselves! With fresh weapon motors, and keeping the refreshed bushing design from the last fight, we were hopeful that HUGE would be able to survive hitting Copperhead long enough to be able to win.
All of a sudden though, there was a little birdie in our ear. Someone overheard somebody say something to some person about some wild idea to spin Copperhead’s drum backwards from its normal direction for fighting HUGE. The idea here was to exacerbate our reliability issues, and try to punch as much force as possible into HUGE. Copperhead used this strategy to destroy End Game’s bearings, and destroy Riptide’s spinning weapon, but actually reversing the drum direction was a much larger commitment. If hitting Copperhead normally was like punching a wall, then hitting Copperhead’s backwards-spinning drum would be like punching a wall coming towards you at 100 miles per hour.
As far as we can remember, nobody had ever tried this strategy against a HUGE-style robot before. We needed to make a new plan, and fast. HUGE was already assembled, through tech check, and ready to fight. We couldn’t make any changes to the robot itself without risking a long delay, which could be fatal on its own in a day where we (ideally) could be fighting twice. Ultimately, we decided to try to avoid the drum and aim for the wheels, as well as resolving to take any opportunities to spin downwards on Copperhead that we could find. From that orientation, it should negate the worst of the energy transfer from a weapon-to-weapon hit, even though it also comes with other tradeoffs.
The fight started out quickly, as we box rushed to show aggression in what we feared could become an evenly-scored fight if sent to the judges. There were a few quick exchanges back and forth, and Copperhead ended up underneath HUGE’s spinner. With a perfectly lined-up hit, one of Copperhead’s drive chains was severed early, and the fight suddenly turned in our favor. With Copperhead’s drive diminished, we were able to pick and choose our hits, targeting the wheels, the top, and trying our hardest to avoid the drum. Once Copperhead reared up on one wheel, a flurry of hits was able to disable the drum, and the final drive chain was removed a few hits later. And just like that, HUGE had scored a fast knockout over the giant-killer of the season, and we were headed to the finals!
Damage to HUGE was minimal, mostly limited to the tips of the blade being extremely mashed up from hitting a robot as solid as Copperhead. We intended to run a different blade for fighting Sawblaze anyhow, so we were able to set it aside and focus on other preparations. Otherwise we went through our regular processes to prepare HUGE after a fight, and were lucky enough to not have greater damage to fix in such a short amount of time.
At this point in the season, HUGE had doubled its previous maximum win total in any prior season. In 2019, HUGE won four fights in a single year, and now we had just finished our eighth victory of the season. What an amazing year already! Including our win in 2021 over Captain Shrederator, HUGE had a winning streak at this point of 9 straight fights, and all that was standing in our way was one final test. We always say “focus on the next fight”, but it’s not often where you know it’s the last fight to focus on.
Yes, both of these robots weigh the exact same.
But really, size is just a matter of perspective.
Sometimes, the hits just line up perfectly. This one spiked down into the top of Copperhead’s right drive chain, severing it and disabling that wheel.
One of the coolest things about getting the fight photos is really zooming in and seeing what you can find. This photo had a clear view of a small link of chain laying on Copperhead’s top, immediately after the hit from above!
And out comes the rest of the drive chain.
Taking basically any hit we can get to try to do some meaningful damage.
Hover mode
You could make the argument that maybe we shouldn’t have gone so close when Copperhead was up on one wheel…
When the fight is so close to the window, you know when you’ve landed the killing blow! A bunch of tiny drive chain pieces bounced off the window, and we immediately knew that HUGE was on to the finals!
Copperhead post-fight. HUGE is the first robot to ever mechanically disable every single subsystem on this incredibly tough robot! (weapon + both drive sides)
Copperhead’s weapon system was disabled by this hit, which smashed the pulley-guard inwards and locked up the drum. The plume of smoke was the belt rapidly scrubbing to a halt on the steel!
Left side tire, missing chain. All of the hits to the wheel were adding up too. You can also see the belt-guard on the weapon - it used to be parallel to the belt.
Right side tire, also missing chain and some pretty good chunks! If this fight ended up close, those big visual chunks out of the wheel would be helpful for convincing the judges.
The finals awaits!
Thanks to HUGE’s sponsors, Mouser Electronics and TTI, Inc. Whenever you need electronic components next, either for hobby or professionally, remember that Mouser and TTI make it possible for HUGE to compete at Battlebots. We couldn’t do it without them!
If you’re interested, also check out our merch store to pick up HUGE gear, or your own pair of angry eyes!
Photo Credits: Dan Longmire, JCRB Photography