Behind the Bots

Enjoy this rewind from July 2020!

This week on the podcast, we catch up two incredible engineers—Chomp captain Zoe Stephenson and teammate Jascha Little!

Zoe and Jascha are a wife-and-husband team who work together as engineers on experimental projects at Applied Invention. Their most visible project, perhaps, is The Long Now Foundation's 10,000 Year Clock, a massive mechanical timekeeper that is designed to survive and tell time until the year 12,000. (Some fans may know that Bronco team captain Zander Rose is the director of The Long Now Foundation).

 

It’s unbelievably difficult to design an object to survive for 10,000 years—metals corrode, moving parts seize up, materials that touch one another run the risk of chemically reacting to one another in strange ways. For inspiration, the team looked to the past and the designs of other mechanical objects, early timepieces and mechanical computers. It’s a fascinating project, and one that we will most certainly continue to talk about on the show.

 

BattleBots fans know Zoe and Jascha for Chomp, the AI-infused hammerbot that ended Paul Ventimiglia’s championship run in 2016. This year, Chomp is back—as a superheavyweight walker bot with a turret-mounted hammer. Zoe and Jascha talk at length about the design, and the technical challenges they face as they try to cut weight from the bot.

 

We really enjoyed this interview, and we hope you do, too.

This week on the podcast, we recap NHRL's June event - and discuss the upcoming OpenSauce convention with Sam Hanson!

 

We'll be back on break next week, but hope to see you at OpenSauce!

*This episode, including the news and interview, is a rerun from February 2020*


This week on the podcast, we go big - literally - with a story so crazy it’s almost hard to believe. Cofounder Matt Oehrlein and his team made headlines in 2015, when they challenged Japan’s Suidobashi Heavy Industry to the world’s first international mech robot duel. The duel garnered 8.5 million views on YouTube...and 8.5 million different opinions on the outcome. Late last year, MegaBots declared bankruptcy and sold off its assets. We go deep on the history of the company, his experience building and fighting Eagle Prime, and what the future of giant fighting robots might possibly hold.

 

Link to the Eagle Prime vs. Kuratas Giant Robot Duel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-ouLX8Q9UM

This is a re-run of our interview from May 2021.

 

See you when break is over!

This week on the podcast — a very special crossover episode, with our dear friends at The RoboCast and Outside of the Box. This season, we’re taking your hot takes, mixing them with our hot takes… it’s hot takes all the way down.

 

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This week on the podcast, we’re chatting with WCVII Giant Nut runner-up — Jonathan Schultz, captain of HUGE! We ask him what filming this season felt like, his plan to face (and make!) attachments, and continue a heated debate around lasagna. This is Jonathan’s first time back on the show since 2019, so we had a lot to catch up on!

 

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This week on the podcast, we’re catching up with the man of the hour — BattleBots World Championship 7 Giant Nut winner Jamison Go, captain of SawBlaze. We ask him what his secret to success was this year, and the surging East Coast dominance we experienced at the competition this season.

 

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This week on the podcast, we’re catching up with longtime friend of the pod Will Bales, captain of the electric green vert HyperShock, at the end of their regular season run on BattleBots. We talk technical specs, style, and what’s next for the team.

 

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This week on the podcast, we’re catching up with Quantum captains (and brothers) James and Grant Cooper, fresh off their exit in the Round of 32. We explore Quantum’s unique and generative design, what it was like returning to the competition after 3 years, and what’s next for the team.

 

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This week on the podcast, we’re catching up with Shatter captain Adam Wrigley to reflect on Season 7 of BattleBots, which just completed its first round of World Championship 7. We’ll briefly talk about the team’s controversial match with Riptide, what went right (and wrong) this season for the robot, and what’s next for the team. Oh! And we look back on the May qualifier at NHRL.

 

Video of robotic toddlers playing soccer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSvLcr5HtNc

 

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