We are the winners and runners-up of the TV show BattleBots, builders of “Bite Force” and “Minotaur”. Ask us anything!

How hard is it for the builders to use the phrase "giant nut" on national television with a straight face?

It is a problem for avoiding all innuendos, I am definitely a big fan of "that's what she said" and they are common on our team. Now I have a pair of giant nuts and many people ask to touch my nuts!

It’s obvious there’s so much tuning and refining that we as fans are unaware of. Ray Billings of Tombstone, for example, shock-mounts every single piece of electronics so it can survive those huge hits. What’s one aspect of your robot that has had so much more thought put into it than we know?

Certainly our electronics and components are very well mounted. We have small shock mounted plates for every electronic item, planned out in advance. Every single wire is reinforced at each connection with glue or tape, and all wires secured with zip-ties. Batteries are mounted in all directions with foam.

Another general thing is that we put a lot of effort on the design side to make our robot have as low of a center-of-gravity as possible. I think that helps us stay stable, and have less vertical surface to have to armor.

Is it expensive to build those robots? The fights are awesome.

Yes, they are horribly expensive. The 250 lb robots cost anywhere from $5k - $50k depending on the team and the type of robot. Glad the fights are awesome!

My question is for Marco - are you as terrified of Daniel as the rest of us are?

This was for Marco, but I am terrified of Daniel, and I do tell him that, and I have asked him to stop screaming before :)

Hey guys, congratulations on an excellent final! Both superb bots and it was a pleasure to watch.

Marco, how damaged was Minotaur going into the final? Was any of the damage in the preceding fights a factor in you losing power?

Paul, how on earth does Bite Force hit so hard compared to other vertical spinners? And how much of an impact did your team have in keeping the robot operational between fights?

I believe that Bite Force is geared to have way less kinetic energy stored in the weapon than most, 1/2 to 1/4 of some of the biggest hitters. I think it appears to transfer a good amount because we have been getting under people with our front feeder wedges, and the shape of our bar is blunt and has a lot of open area between swings. I think others hit hard too, but getting good bite on an opponent is also a lot of luck in driving!

Keeping the robot running between fights takes all team members working all day. We were often the first ones in the doors at 7am and often one of the last ones out late at night 10-11pm. Our team was busting ass all day repairing and improving!

Thanks for replying! Was the choice of a lower KE for reliability reasons? For example, Monsoon’s original bar seemed to have a frightening initial hit but broke down easily

Essentially yes, I think it is enough power to cause damage, any more power needs more weight for motors and batteries, or a longer spinup time, both of which are bad to me. I am OK with others constantly trying for 100kj!

For Bite Force: What happened to the weapon when it didn't spin up for a few seconds? Will you be making changes to the chain guard? A second chain? For Minotaur: what are the plastic wheels at the back for? Do you have any plans to prevent Minotaur from getting stuck on debris as easily?

We turned it off for a bit, because we could tell the motors were getting weaker in the middle of the match as it had a slower spinup time all of a sudden. Travis is coaching next to me and let me know to conserve because we already broke their weapon. We turned it on after a bit to try and get the knockout and show the judges we were using control and strategy against a tough opponent.

A second chain, or pair of belts, would all require significant re-design or re-builds. It is possible, depends on how much time they give us before a future competition!

Congrats to both of you on an awesome season, we hope to see you back on Discovery next year! It's been great seeing so many AMAs over on our sub and I'm really happy to see you getting one on the big stage.

For both of you: Do you think BattleBots should revive televising a lightweight and/or middleweight class in their competition? There have been a lot of legendary bots in the lighter classes over the years (Ziggo, Hazard, T-Minus, etc.) and it'd be a great way to connect the series closer to grassroots robot combat which features classes even lighter than the lightweights.

For Paul: Now that you've retaken a 2-1 lead for Giant Nuts over Ray Billings and Tombstone, do you think your competitors will believe Bite Force is now the robot to beat instead of Tombstone?

For Marco: Which one of the other robots in BattleBots do you think Daniel would have the most fun driving and why?

Thanks for the kind words and being a fan of the show! I think they could do something with middleweights, but the single weightclass is much easier for the common person to understand, and the big robots are challenging, and that makes it more fun! Plus, the energy from 250 lb machines flying through the air live is not comparable to a 60lb robot IMO.

I think from a rank/seeding position, they may make Bite Force #1 seed, but I don't mind if they don't because Tombstone is still devastating, and people probably do not want to face them more than us. We may beat them, but Tombstone may more likely make them end their robot's life for good.

Paul, as one of Minotaur's biggest fans, I want to congratulate you on an incredible season. You are a deserving champion. Question: What was your biggest concern when facing Minotaur?

Marco, I love the passion of Riobotz and cheered for you all season. Congratulations on a great season and reaching the finals. Question: What was your biggest concern when facing Bite Force?

Thanks guys, and again, congratulations to both of you and your teams.

Biggest concern was getting destroyed or owned the entire time. Minotaur's weapon is a beast, one solid connection hit from it can launch robots. They have launched one of my old 220lb robots into the arena Lexan wall before.

Thanks for being a fan!

With the four weapon motors on Biteforce, is the weapon still able to run if one motor burns out and what were the performance improvements with the quad motor setup? Also, was a redundant second chain ever considered, and or seen on other spinners? Thank you! WPI alum, and I really enjoyed this season.

Yes, the motors are all linked together, but as long as they aren't mechanically jammed, the other motors could keep it moving. The main improvement was system reliability, and reduced weight. The motors and batteries were "happier" because they could be controlled with VEX BB controllers, with a full range of speed and current limiting, as opposed to hard on/off relays. The system was way lighter because it let us operate the entire robot on the same voltage, so we reduced battery packs we didn't need any more for the 48v Motenergy motor. All of our Magmotors run off 24v. This let us have extra weight for armor!

If you have spares of those Me0909. I know a certain PNW team that would use them :)

Yes I do, message me, spares new and used good!

Paul: how do you get your weapon to transfer kinetic energy so well? That spinner packs a serious punch.

Maybe because ours spins a little slower, and has a nice wide/blunt shaped weapon bar? I am not really sure, but yes it has been working well! I think it is just a matter of having an opponent fed up our front wedges and hitting them from underneath.

Hey, thanks for doing this and for putting on a great show.

My questions for both teams are: are there any changes you want to/will make for next season?

And also, what's your favourite match of the season, whether it's one of your own or another competitor's?

I always want more reliability. I want a way to have our chain system fully covered from shrapnel, we added some armor points, but opponents debris and small parts still got sucked into our weapon drive. I want to make our molded urethane tires have a better rubber compound. They didn't fail in BattleBots, but we used them on Nighthawk at Robogames and the urethane wasn't adhered very well.

Bite Force: How many pieces is your robot's frame before assembly? Is it closer to being milled from a single billet, or a lot of individual pieces bolted together?

How bad was the damage after the final fight?

The frame is one giant weldment, made from flat plates waterjet cut by BigBlueSaw.com

It is quite far from being a single billet, and also not really bolted together. I would say, it is components bolted to a welded unibody frame. In this album you can see the white frame weldment, and then armor and components bolt in:

https://www.facebook.com/pg/AptyxDesigns/photos/?tab=album&album_id=2018182371836529

Damage- to be honest, I have not opened up and inspected the robot after the final, but I assume the weapon motors are burnt out now, they lasted the last 5 fights in a row though. There are many sheared bolts for the top armor, and the one front wedgelet had the hinge mount rip out 10x 5/16-18 bolts out of the front panel. A fairly average amount of damage?

That is some excellent welding there. Is that all aluminum?

Frame and everything welded is 6061, some structure/armor parts are 7075, and some 5052. Wedges/weapon/shafts are various steels

Is it expensive to repair the bots after each battle? Does the Discovery Channel help with those expenses?

It is very expensive, sometimes losing $1k - $2k in parts in a bad match! We get very little money from the TV shows. It was a little better in the first season, but now with more robots they have lessened any financial help to be very little. We try and get sponsors to advertise with our team in order to offset our costs.

Have people reach out to us if they are interested in sponsoring Bite Force!

I thought I missed this ama

Paul it is amazing to ask some questions to you

First, did you ditched the grappler because you already won a giant nut with it or because it was too powerful for the treads?

Second, will you change the design next season so you can sweep the board and win with every design/ weapon?

Finally what got you interested in robotics?

As for Marco...

You have yet to win this giant nut so what design changes will we see in Minotaur?

Ronogames or BattleBots and why?

What are the differences between Minotaur and tauro Maximus?

What got you interested in robotics?

Thanks for taking your time.

We only built the 2015 grappler version to make it look cool as a toy, and be built quickly/cheaply, as we weren't originally accepted as one of the "official" teams, we were an alternate entry until 9 days before the event. The spinner version is what we would have wanted, and were able to build after having some clout returning.

We may change the design again, but we haven't talked about or discussed it yet. A new design would require lots of time and funding, so it is more likely we make a refined version of the current vertical spinner Bite Force.

I got into robotics by wanted to make animatronics and special effects for movies like Terminator, Jurassic Park, and Star Wars

Hey Paul, it's Nick from 190/WPI. Was great to meet you last Friday, really enjoyed talking about FRC and etc.

What's your favorite 190 robot you were involved with? Am curious!

Hi Nick, nice meeting you and thanks for helping us move the robot around!

My favorite FIRST team 190 robot was probably 2011 G-Rex. It worked pretty well, and we had one of the more inspiring/copied mini bot systems.

First off, congratulations on winning Battlebots! I was pretty disappointed when you guys ended up losing to Chomp last season because I thought you had a pretty good bracket to make a run all he way to the finals and I’m glad to see it’s worked out this time. Now, onto the questions...

For Paul:

During your last AMA, you mentioned that you probably wouldn’t return to a design like Brutality because of the stress it puts on the weapon motors. Can you elaborate on this?

Marc mentioned during his AMA that one of the reasons Icewave would go flying after a hit was because the bar would flex a bit and hit the bot causing it to become unstable. Was this a problem Brutality had to deal with as well or is it specific to overhead bars that have a large mass above the bar?

Are the hinges for Bite Force’s wedgelets custom made or were they off-the-shelf?

Bite Force’s bar doesn’t spin that quickly compared to some of the other verts but seems to dish out just as much damage if not more. How does Bite Force manage to fish out these sort of hits with its lower tip speed and weight compared to some of the other verts?

For Rob:

What happened to Megabots and what did you do during your time involved with it?

For Marco:

What made you decide to go for a multi-tooth drum as opposed to a single tooth drum for the tournament and what advantages/disadvantages are there to using it compared to the single tooth drum?

Is it just me, or did Minotaur lose a weapon belt or two during the Monsoon fight?

For Brutality, a horizontal bar spinner, you need at least 15+ horsepower to have any real chance of a fast spinup combined with good kinetic energy. Therefore, you need powerful motors, but they can't have much diameter or size or it makes packaging very challenging. 3" frame height for Brutality, about 8" frame height for Tombstone for example. The smaller motors are pushed very hard, and can burn out more easily. Yes, Brutality hit itself often during a big hit, but it wasn't as bad for us because we had a thicker 3/4" bar, and it was shorter, only 48" long.

The hinges for Bite Force are very custom, we machined them out of billet aluminum blocks 3" x 3" by 5", and a 5/8" shoulder bolt as the pins.

I think it looks like we are getting big hits because we are getting underneath our opponents with our wedges first. Otherwise, maybe our wide weapon shape is helping get good engagement, and the fact that ours is a bar with lots of empty space, not a disk with 1" tooth stickout? Honestly I do not know why, all educated guesses.

Great job to both competitors. Keep up the hard work.

Paul: How do you drive Bite Force so well despite having four wheels?

Marco: How does it feel to be the only team representing Brazil, especially since you're doing it so well?

I am glad people think it looks well driven, but when I watch matches on TV all I see are my driving mistakes! I think our robot drives well because it has 4wd, but isn't too long. It drives more easily with the weapon on, which adds turning resistance. With the weapon off, and so much weight on the forward wheels, it is a bit squirrely and rotates easily like a 2wd machine.

Question for Paul.

1. What was the extent of the damage after the final?
2. I've noticed with your weapon, even after it hits something, it just doesn't seem to stop. Why would you say that is?
3. Shout out to you and your perfect buddies at 254!!!

Bite Force is pretty beat up and weathered, but mostly OK. The weapon motors are likely burnt out, but they lasted 5 grueling matches in a row, we would need to replace them. One wedgelet mount ripped out, we would need to drill and tap the frame for a larger size Keensert.

The weapon does stop sometimes, depends on how much engagement we get on our opponent before hitting them. The opponent likely begins flying upwards or having a part break off before all energy needs to be transferred.

Yeah 254 had a great run this year and the past few years, sadly i have had very little time to mentor and work with them the last couple of years because of BattleBots build season overlap :(

Thank you so much! Rooting for yall next season!

Thanks, glad to have you rooting for us!

Questions for Paul of team Bite Force:

1. Out of all the bots you’ve ever made, which one is your favorite?

2. Do you plan on doing anything with season 1 Bite Force? Like maybe take some weight off it and enter it in RoboGames or something?

3. Are there any weaknesses that could allow the current version of Bite Force to be defeated next season? The only weakness it had was the exposed chain but you already took care of that.

Congratulations on being a 3 time Battlebots champion ( Battlebots 2009, Abc season 1, and Discovery season 1 ) and what I find most amazing is the fact that you’ve been able to do it with a different bot every time ( Brutality, S1 Bite Force, and S2 Bite Force ). I’m starting to think if we just give a random bot, you’ll figure out how to win with it.

1. Favorite has to be Moonraker for the NASA Regolith Challenge because it won my team $500k, hard to argue with that. This last version of Bite Force I was pretty happy with from a finished product perspective though, it looked nice and put on a great show!
2. I do not ever plan on competing with S1 Bite Force. The jaws cannot face spinning weapons, and BattleBots owns the image rights to the robot, so it would have to be changed a bit. The tracks are too risky to run more than once, fun to try, but I never suggest anyone should use anything but wheels!
3. Powerful spinning weapons and flippers could defeat any robots with the right positioning and luck. There are many weaknesses, upside down it doesn't work that well, and can get stuck on debris, and you could hit the back wheels or sides with a powerful spinner and jam up the drivetrain, but we won't make it easy for you!

Ok! Hello Bite Force and Minotaur! Congrats on your runs (and title, Bite Force).

To questions!

Minotaur;

1. Does "It's robot fighting time" translate well into Portuguese?

2. How satisfying would it have been to remove Tombstone's tyres?

3. Who would Minotaur's ideal tag team partner be?

Bite Force;

1. When people were predicting non-Bite Force robots to win, how did you react?

2. How did it feel to watch HUGE turn into a clusterbot?

3. Who would Bite Force's ideal tag team partner be?

1. It is always funny watching fans comments and seeing their predictions, they have limited information, especially on new teams and robots. It is fun when people think others will win :)
2. It was a major relief when Huge broke apart, that was the most stressful and then most satisfying part of the entire tournament for me. My heart sank when our weapon broke!
3. Well a robot like Tombstone or Bronco could probably pair well with anyone at all, if they would allow me then I would pick them because I like their robots and teams!

Paul, why did you change from the Etek drive for the weapon into the quad magmotor configuration? Does it help with spin up time?

Main reason was overall reliability, and secondly to save weight. The Magmotors are built much more ruggedly, with thicker solid magnets and short cans, and no cast parts, all billet machined. The Motenergy motors are quite fragile in reality with cast parts and thinner magnets. Secondly, the Magmotors can be controlled by a pair of VEX Victor BB controllers, so there is less in-rush current than there is with a big contactor for the Motenergy motor. Thirdly, by using the 24v Magmotors, our entire robot now ran on the same voltage, so we could reduce battery packs and save weight.

Hi guys,

I'm a mechanical engineering freshman at college and I'm on a 3lb battlebot team with a bunch of other inexperienced freshmen! Do you have any advice for our young team? Thanks for a great season, I'm a huge fan of both bots!

Exactly what Rob said, find a local event. You will learn so much by seeing many robots up close, and meet people in your area, and be able to ask questions in person.

Start with something simple, wedge, not too powerful of a weapon, and then you will be able to make improvements in the future after gaining some experience early on.

How/where do you test your robots?

I have never really had a robot ready enough for "testing" before an event, usually just 30 seconds of test driving on the floor of the garage before it gets packed up in a car. The spinning weapons are way too dangerous to test outside of an arena, so all of our testing ends up occurring in the small safety inspection test box at the BattleBots event. We don't hit things there though, still quite dangerous, we just test the spinning and driving a little.

For Paul: Bite Force was unstoppable this season! Were there any particular bots you were afraid of?

I am afraid of many, I worry a lot! Any of the big spinners are scary, Tombstone, Icewave, etc, and Bronco has the power to get anyone out of the arena. We were quite worried about Huge and how to face them, and Minotaur was also frightening because of how much energy they have in their weapon and how dense and well built they are.

Congrats to you both for making it to the finals and for an excellent battle!

For Paul: what makes the wedgelets so good at getting under everybody? Also, if you faced Tombstone this year, would you have gone back to the wedge and lifter configuration from 2 years ago? Can the spinner fit with the full wedge?

For Marco: What caused the drum to fail in the middle of the championship fight? I heard the full whine of the drum spinner in the middle of the fight, so was there a strategic decision to go full power right before the hit that disabled the drum?

The wedgelets I think just work by being hinged, so that the front is scraping, and being less wide than a single piece wedge. Against Tombstone is the same we used against Rotator and Ringmaster from last season. It is a stronger and shallower better wedge than the S1 version of Bite Force, and the wedge is lower down so it would work better than S1. The spinner is on in all configurations!

What’s something that only people actually at the taping would know that Discovery doesn’t show on TV?

There is a ton of downtime if you watch from the audience seats in the taping, maybe 40 minutes between matches often! It can be boring as it is not just a robot competition, it is a TV show filming first and foremost.

Congrats to both of your teams for the great runs and championship battle! (Go Bite Force!)

​

I have a question for Paul. With a possibility of season four, what big changes (if any) are you looking to do to your bot?

Thanks for rooting for us! I would always love to design and build new robots. Improving on this design is likely though with limited time. We might do a new version, with all new internal layouts to try and get our weapon driven symmetrically from the left and right, that would be way more reliable. It may look largely the same though to someone watching it on TV. Not sure yet, we have to see what the rules are like for Season 4 if it gets announced.

What does Will Bales smell like?

What would you like to see in season 4 that we've yet to see from the rebooted series?

What do you smell like? I don't wonder what people smell like unless they look like they don't shower, then I still don't wonder, I just assume they smell bad and I avoid being near them.

I would like to see more behind the scenes pit repair action, only observation style, just filming people working without forced interviews of just talking heads.

Hi Paul I have 2 questions. 1. What got you into robot combat?. 2. How did it feel to win battlebots 2015 and 2018?

I have a distinct memory of just searching the dial-up internet when I was a kid for the term "robots" and finding the rules for an old Robot Wars event before BattleBots existed. That got me curious, then later when BattleBots was on TV I could convince my parents to fund my first BattleBot!

It feels incredible to win, it is the part of my life I am most passionate about, and most of my friend circle is based around robotics, and my job is in robotics, so it is very special to do well in a big spotlight like TV.

Just want to thank both of you a lot, you have inspired more people than you know. I was vaguely into robotics before the battlebots reboot and I've been motivated by teams like Bite Force and Minotaur to start up my own robot combat team, which I hope to do soon. Bite Force and Minotaur are among my favorite all-time robot combat teams!

For Bite Force

1. What inspired your robot's name?
2. If you could rematch someone, who would it be?
3. How do you think you would fare against Bronco?
4. Any teases for next season improvements?

For Minotaur

1. Why did you call your robot Minotaur?
2. If you could rematch someone, who would it be?
3. How did you guys get into robot combat?
4. Any teases for next season improvements?

Thanks!

Thanks, that is really flattering to hear that we have inspired people!
1. From the 2015 version, we had crushing jaws, and the "bite force quotient" was a term I discovered for comparing animals bite strength, and I thought that sounded neat! Plus alphabetically B helped list it early on websites and lists.
2. I would like to rematch Chomp of course.
3. I think Bronco would be very stressful and tough to face. If we get lucky and stay to his side it could go like Whiplash, and we could be flipped like Warhawk!
4. I think I have an idea to make the weapon spin up faster and make it more reliable, but it will be tough to design to be strong!

Hi Paul I have 2 questions. What got you into robot combat, and how did it feel to win battlebots 2015 and 2018?

Lego, I love Lego, RC cars, and wanting to make special effects and animatronics for movies! I answered above for how it feels "It feels incredible to win, it is the part of my life I am most passionate about, and most of my friend circle is based around robotics, and my job is in robotics, so it is very special to do well in a big spotlight like TV. "

I'm haven't really watched battlebots so I don't know if they say this but my question is - How long (estimate or average time) does it take to build a bot?

It takes about 2 months working very very hard around the clock as the fastest time to build a new machine, but that makes it very expensive and you have to have good machine shop resources and a strong team. 3-5 months is much more common.

Does that include design? Not counting design we built war hawk in 3 or 4 weeks on nights and weekends. Granted, our bot is much less complex and capable than yours 😀

Correct, including design, ordering parts, planning. Usually about 3-4 weeks of design, and 3-4 weeks of build. An extra week for things that go wrong or life.

BiteForce: you mentioned moving from one to four motors for the weapon. Is that purely for redundancy or is there some other reason for it?

Also, congrats on the win. Battlebots brings so much joy to my life and watching you wreck everything was the highlight of my week!

It was also to save weight, so we could add more armor like change guards.

At the same time of changing it, we also got a chance to gear it a little faster for more power based on S2!

Team Bite Force,
There was some discussion on this subreddit after the final. Some folks claim you deliberately powered down your weapon after disabling Minotaur's drum, while others argued you would never willingly give up an advantage like that and the weapon was having problems. Would you settle it for us?

Powered down on purpose because Travis and I could sense that the motors were beginning to die after 5 matches. We did it once we knew their drum was dead and we wanted to try pushing them around a while to be conservative. Turning it off could possibly save it for another use, keeping it on surely would have killed it.

Hope that settles it!

This one's for everyone. Do you ever bite your cheek or jaw and develop lesions? Also, what is the salad dressing you prefer for 1. Salad bar and 2. Marinade? Please limit answers to salad dressings available in the northern panhandle of West Virginia. (Wheeling area)

Yes I am human have bit my mouth, nothing bad though. I like the Ruby Tuesday salad bar, probably ranch dressing, lots of croutons. Soy garlic honey sriracha marinade. You have to check availability, I have never been to West Virginia.

What was everyone's reaction when Bombshell beat Tombstone? Do you all watch the matches together?

Teena told me that at the time I immediately said "he cleared the bracket for us all and now it is open for the taking!"

We don't all watch the matches, usually, we keep working, and then right at the moment a match starts and we here the buzzer we run 50 yards in the pits towards some of the TV streaming setups they have for us.

How close are we to living the plot of the Termenator movies?

I think not close at all, but I do love watching Terminator 2!

I made a battlebot for my dog to play with and I got in trouble. How did you guys not get in trouble making these violent bots?

I don't use robots to living things, simple.