Check out this fight in BattleBots Season 5, Episode 5.
Well, what can be said that already hasn’t been said. The fight that sparked a thousand arguments. The fight that even Discovery hated.
This was a really interesting fight, and an interesting attachment to try to solve. We went into the fight with a number of plans for how to attack the bike rack, the most successful being our attempt to lift it with the rear support legs of the robot. But after our promising first attempt at that strategy, we were pinned in the corner for the remaining 90 seconds of the fight.
Needless to say, we’ve made adjustments not just for this, but for all sorts of other attachments and bike racks and anything that we could dream up since. We don’t ever expect another fight like this, and we never plan to leave it in the judges’ hands again to enforce the Battlebots rulebook.
Just like our fight against Mammoth, we once again left the arena with a functional robot. A sad feeling, but much better than getting ripped apart in terms of preparations for our next fight. We ensured that our motor controllers were okay (they hit their thermal cutoffs in the last 10-ish seconds of the fight), and prepared for our next match.
For the record (as it comes up often) the portrayal/editing on the show was truthful, to the best of our memories. The mid-fight conversations weren’t manipulated, and the feelings expressed were true and honest. The only thing they changed was to remove the “active weapon” chants and boo’s from the builder audience. Sadly, we heard these “active weapon” chants edited into our later fight with Kraken, which isn’t fair to them at all.
Photo Gallery
The bike rack
Trying to drive around it…
Trying to drive over it…
Trying to lift under it with the support legs, and scoring a hit on the front lip…
The pin
A number of teams stopped by to discuss pinning rules and active weapon requirements with Greg Munson after the fight. This occurred before the discussions shown in Season 5, Episode 3 (regarding Beta vs. Rotator, which happened after HUGE vs. Hydra in the real world).
A better rules-based breakdown than we could have produced, from Seth Schaffer of Team Bots’N’Stuff (Bloodsport & Retrograde). He covers the relevant parts of the rulebook, for those who want a deep dive.
Photo Credit: Dan Longmire