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BattleBots Day 3, Sat, 26 May 2001

Hello Everyone,

The third day of BattleBots competition (Saturday) saw the continued advance of both Team Regan Designs’ bots. Between the two bots, we have now scored 6 victories, including 2 knockouts. The day could best be described as hours of mundane boredom with an hour of intense excitement thrown in to bring the average to the "exciting" level for the day.

One of the problems with the organization of the tournament has been that match schedules were not announced till 8:00 in the morning. This meant that participants had to show up no later than 9:30 to make sure that their bot was ready to go in case they happened to be the first bout of the day at 11:00. If the first bout happened to be at 7:00PM, as was the case today, you ended up getting there 8 hours earlier than you had to.

The day was spent fixing motors and checking out the competition. Brent gave a 30 minute interview to the Comedy Central people about his own background and the bots. Snippets from the interview may be aired along with the competitions in which one of our bots is competing.
Once again, T-Wrex went first. The bout was against a fairly popular bot "Scrap Daddy". This bot is made out of things salvaged from scrap parts and boasts a wedge shape and a flipper arm on the wedge. Alain wasted no time in fulfilling the prophecy about the meaning of life for Scrap Daddy: "Scrap thou art and to the scrap heap doest thou returnest". Scrap Daddy was soon reconstituted to scrap and T-Wrex won the bout through a knockout. Picture 1 is a post-bout picture of Scrap Daddy, with its broken flipper arm resting against its wheel. Picture 2 shows a close-up of the broken flipper arm, while picture 3 shows damage to the side of Scrap Daddy including a bashed in pressure gauge. After the bout even the referees approached Alain and commended him on his incredible driving skill. One even went so far as to say that "This is the best driving I have seen at BattleBots." While relentlessly beating up on his victim, Alain did not hit a single hazard and hit the spike strip (the arena wall) wall only once. In his 4 victories, I think Alain has been in contact with the spike strip only 3 or 4 times, with at least one and possibly two bouts with absolutely no contact whatsoever! While there are no guarantees, I think this bout has a very high likelihood of being televised.
After the post fight interview, we rushed back to the pits to prepare Omega-13 for its bout. Picture 4 shows Michelle inspecting Omega-13 prior to its bout.

This bout was against a veteran bot "Bender". This bot supports a large horizontal rotating disk, spinning at 2000 RPM. The disk has 2 steel teeth bolted on which are used to destroy the opponent. Brent modified Omega-13 by removing the back spikes and instead installing a steel bar. Brent charged Blender with the steel bar end of Omega-13, resulting in one of Blender's teeth breaking off. This resulted in the rotating disk going unbalanced and throwing off the drive belt, causing the disk to come to a stop. Brent proceeded to bash the defenseless Bender all over the place. Unfortunately, in the process Omega-13 received some serious hits from the kill saws, resulting in damage to the titanium armor and one of the wheels. The spectacular shower of sparks from the kill saws hitting the titanium armor has virtually guaranteed that this bout will get televised, or so I think. Picture 5 below shows Bender after the bout and with the spinning disk removed. The broken blade is visible on the far side of the disk, while the intact blade is visible in the foreground, covered with foam. Picture 6 below shows a close up of the fractured blade.In the post fight inspection of T-Wrex, we recovered several pieces of Scrap Daddy from the wheel wells of T-Wrex. Other than the debris, there was no internal or even cosmetic damage to T-Wrex. T-Wrex will be ready to take on its next challenger as soon as the batteries are topped off.


Unfortunately Omega-13 did not fare as well. It appears that in addition to the severe damage to the armor, two of the motors have sustained some sort of damage. We have enough parts to get Omega-13 ready for its next bout, but we are gravely concerned about the continuing problems.

Fortunately the events organizers realized the burden they were imposing on everyone by not publishing the schedule. They have now published a time for every bout between now and the end of the tournament. T-Wrex's next bout is Sunday at 1:00, while Omega-13's next bout is at 9:00PM.

Omega-13 goes against another first-timer called BOB (Basher Of Bots). Since its builders are local, they have been moving the bot back to their workshop after each bout, so we do not have much information about it. T-Wrex on the other hand goes against a well known veteran, "Bad Attitude". Bad Attitude was the runner up in the last tournament and lost in the finals while significantly ahead, after getting stuck on the spike strips. It is a solid, well-built, wedge design and is driven by a mature (a.k.a. senior citizen) and experienced driver. The outcome of the bout will come down to one thing: driving skill. If Alain can out-drive his opponent, Alain will become the undisputed "best driver in BattleBots", as well as winning a guaranteed televised match (all quarterfinals are televised). As one of the top 16 bots, T-Wrex has already won a spot in one of the rumble matches.

Sunday will be another slow day with just these two bouts and lots and lots of bot repairs. If both the bots win and make it all they way to the finals, we are looking at a total of 9 bouts on Monday. As hectic as that sounds, we will all love to be in a position to have to endure that kind of a day!

Hamid