Dale's Homemade Robots

Robot Battles 2015

I had bots in all four weight classes this year. The Sunday Microbattles event was single elimination and did not have the traditional rumble due to time restrictions. There were over 40 bots entered. Some of the teams had competed on this summers BattleBots TV show. The builders of Captain Shrederator, Witch Doctor, Nightmare, and Overhaul were all there. Jim Smentowski showed up with a tiny 1lb version of Nightmare.

Death by Twinkies lost its first match to Shazbot (Jim Smentowski). He quickly shoved it into the pushout. Due to single elimination that was the only fight it had. Algos by Michael Jeffries won the ant weight championship.

Electric Whirligig lost to Naked Singularity after two draws. It handled well and hit the opponent many times but was unable to kill him or knock him into the pushout. On the 3rd round Kelly put in the broom to cut the arena size in half and declared the hazard hole a pushout. I accidentally drove over the hazard and was declared the loser. Naked Singularity went on to the finals and lost to Margin of Safety who was declared the beetle weight champion.

I had a much better day on Monday. There were sixteen 12# bots and twelve 30# bots competing. Several were first time builders. Omega Force (12#) made to the semi finals by defeating Testbot, Dolos and Abrasive Personality but failed to defeat Michael Jeffries' Hypnus and ShaBoomBox by Jim Smentowski. ShaBoomBox went on to win the 12# championship. Hypnus won the 12# rumble.

Overthruster (30#) defeated Spanky, Uberclocker and Styx before being literally killed by Michael Jeffries excellent Nyx. As a lifter bot Nyx was able to pick up Overthruster and then drop it on its nose which triggered the auto-flipper thus launching itself 4 feet into the air ... repeatedly. The crowd loved it. Too bad there was no award for most air time. Eventually the abuse broke the flipper mechanism and later a MOSFET in the motor controller went up in smoke. Nyx went on to win the 30# championship. Uberclocker won the 30# rumble.

Here's the highlights video