Interview and February NHRL Recap with UIUC's iRobotics!

Summary

Behind the Bots: Interview and February NHRL Recap with UIUC's iRobotics!

Podcast Date: March 3, 2026
Guests: Members and alumni of UIUC’s iRobotics Combat Robotics Teams
Host(s): Jake & Brandon
Episode Theme: Deep dive into the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s (UIUC) iRobotics team, their unique build process, innovative robots, and collegiate combat robotics culture—plus reflections on February’s NHRL and RoboBrawl events.

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Episode Overview

This episode features an engaging roundtable conversation with both current team members and alumni of UIUC’s iRobotics, covering their approach to combat robotics, team structure, notable robots (including Goose, Quack, Kill Switch, Undertaker), and highlights from recent competitions. The team’s distinctive “class-year teams” structure and hands-on learning approach are explored alongside detailed technical discussions, memorable competition moments, and community-building efforts at the collegiate level.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Team Organization & Philosophy

• Class-Year Teams: Each undergraduate class (freshman through senior) at UIUC builds its own unique 30lb robot, resulting in four distinct “teams within a team.” This structure drives diversity in designs and rapid skill development.
  • Jason (President): “[Freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors] each year builds their own robot, so each one has its own unique design style and mentality.” [03:21]
  • Ryan (Senior Captain): “We’re essentially four teams in one trench coat.” [04:03]
• Knowledge Transfer: Each year accumulates knowledge and tech, which is handed down informally as new cohorts take the reins.
  • “We're definitely seeing the floor of each team's performance rising over the years.” — Jason [06:03]

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2. Notable Robots & Their Evolution

• Current Robots by Year:

  • Seniors: Quack — Large, modular 30lb robot with swappable weapon modules.
  • Juniors: Kill Switch — Shuffling beater bar with a robust, invertible chassis.
  • Sophomores: Fish — Wide-body vertical spinner.
  • Freshmen: Large ring spinner (still developing).

• Personal Projects:

  • Undertaker (Justin) — Built independently; a testament to how the club encourages personal innovation and experimentation.
    • “Undertaker is my personal project... After four or five years doing this, figured I could build my own.” — Justin [07:37]

• Legacy Bots:

  • Goose (Alumnus: Kogan): Evolved over multiple years. Started from a rough post-COVID rebuild, iterated through various versions, and recently retrofitted with a counter-gyro flywheel for enhanced stability. Notable for multiple strong competition finishes.
  • Colossal Avian & Roundhouse — Alumni teams still competing at high levels.

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3. Design, Iteration, and Technical Innovations

• Quack’s Modular Weapon System:

  • Swappable weapon modules: large vert, small vert, horizontal, beater bar.
  • “This allows us to essentially choose what hand we throw against any opponent.” — Ryan [34:04]
  • Swapping modules is fast: “We can theoretically swap out a module in probably a minute or two.” [37:09]

• Kill Switch's Durability and Shuffler Innovation:

  • Heavy-duty frame, invertibility, and unique shuffler design. Design decisions were adjusted based on informative design reviews from alumni.
  • “We wanted to make the weapon system beefy enough that we can spin down against verts and potentially break them.” — Jacob [60:22]

• Counter-Gyro Flywheel in Goose:

  • Added to improve drivability, but set multiple weapon ESCs on fire (humorously tracked as ‘ESC Death Points’).
  • “The goal is to do the counter gyro and it has been a long struggle—we have set three ESCs on fire.” — Kogan [20:04]
  • “The math ends up working out...I end up getting about a 30% gyro cancel.” — Kogan [22:28]

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4. Competition & Community Highlights

• RoboBrawl:

  • Hosted annually as an EOH (Engineering Open House) exhibit at UIUC, now among the largest 30lb combat events in the US.
  • Brings together college teams from the Midwest to compete, fostering both accessibility and regional rivalries.
  • “RoboBrawl X, marking its 10th anniversary, was the largest to date. 32 robots showed up.” — Jason [30:33]

• NHRL Participation:

  • Teams regularly travel to national events, test designs, and cross-pollinate technical ideas.

• Spectacular Fight Moments:

  • Crack versus Harold—battery caught fire, leading to a 3-hour event pause for arena ventilation [58:19]
  • Kill Switch vs. Goose: “First hit...pushed Goose into the floor so hard, that Goose is the one that made that dent there.” [60:22]
  • Quack vs. Emperor: “You bent that thing... Emperor’s bar looks like it’s banana’d.” — Jake [40:28]

• AR Material Misadventures:

  • “Do not buy Hardware 500 from eBay... It's not exactly hard.” — Ryan [44:46]
  • Lesson: Discount AR (abrasion resistant) isn’t always what it claims.

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5. Learning Pathways & Mentorship

• Design, Print, Destroy (DPD) Program:
  • In-house 1lb build-and-fight competition for onboarding, skill-building, and rapid iteration.
  • “I will teach you how to build a combat robot, teach you how to CAD it, and then I will pay for it. And you get to build and fight it. What’s not to love?” — Ryan [53:35]
• Alumni Roles:
  • Alumni offer design advice and mentorship but avoid controlling current team efforts.
  • “We try to foster that individual pursuit of success... People are used to being able to figure things out on their own.” — Kogan [50:38]

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6. Engineering and Fabrication Insights

• Weapon Fabrication:
  • Most beaters and major weapons are outsourced to Chinese suppliers (Rapid Direct, ZTL) due to cost.
  • “In-house runs $1,500 for a beater versus $220 from China.” — Ryan [74:18]
• Team Machining:
  • Most non-weapon parts are built in UIUC’s machine shops, with heavy use of water jets, mills, and 3-axis machines.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “We’re essentially four teams in one trench coat.” — Ryan [04:03]
• “When we were freshmen, it was a massive accomplishment to even have a driving robot... by RoboBrawl.” — Ryan [05:17]
• “If you kill a drive ESC, it’s one point, and if you kill a weapon ESC... it’s three points. My team is the winner by a lot.” — Kogan [21:03]
• “That lipo fire basically took out RoboBrawl for about three hours. We smoked out the entire arena.” — Jason [58:23]
• “Do not buy Hardware 500 from eBay... It is not exactly hard.” — Ryan [44:46]
• “I will teach you how to build a combat robot... and I will pay for it.” — Ryan [53:35]
• “If you are a new builder: do plants, do plants, do plants. The people at the top are doing plants and you should, too.” — Jake [55:52]
• “Kill Switch is a very tough nut to crack. Its frame is 3/4 inch aluminum side rails... We haven’t had many issues with damaging the armor.” — Justin [71:41]
• “We love building spinning robots.” — Ryan [66:52]

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Important Timestamps & Segment Guide

| Timestamp | Key Segment | |---------------|--------------------------------------------------| | 02:19 | Team & robot introductions | | 06:03 | Growth in team skill and robot disparity | | 07:37 | Undertaker as a personal project | | 12:20 | Overview of iRobotics’ full structure | | 16:51 | Goose’s post-graduation evolution | | 21:03 | ESC Death Points & countergyro explanation | | 30:33 | RoboBrawl origin & logistics | | 34:04 | Quack’s modular weapons + technical details | | 58:19 | Crack vs Harold – The lipo fire incident | | 60:22 | Kill Switch vs Goose – Floor damage anecdote | | 66:06 | Kill Switch origins & design philosophy | | 73:37 | Beater bar outsourcing discussion | | 75:34 | Team’s picks for top UIUC robots | | 78:41 | Freshman robot “Fish” emerges |

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Summary & Closing Thoughts

UIUC’s iRobotics club exemplifies the best in collegiate combat robotics—innovative formats, iterative learning, focused mentorship, and a culture of friendly intra-team rivalry. Their embrace of new materials, risk-taking in design, and willingness to pragmatically outsource specialty parts is matched by a commitment to teaching, outreach, and continual improvement year to year.

From the technical mayhem of RoboBrawl to national events at NHRL, their robots—be it the rugged Kill Switch, flexible Quack, or feature-rich Undertaker—make a mark with creative engineering and hands-on spirit. Their “Design, Print, Destroy” program and team structure give students a rapid, empowering ramp into serious engineering and combat competition.

The episode closes on excitement for future events and clear mutual respect among team members and alumni—showcasing not just robots, but the thriving community built around them.

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Listen to the full episode for detailed fight recaps and deep dives into robot builds, or check out RoboBrawl and UIUC iRobotics online for upcoming events and entry info!

Transcript

[A]

From Cincinnati, Ohio and Bowie, Maryland, this is behind the Bots, the podcast that brings you the stories and the people behind the bots. I'm Jake.

[B]

I'm Brandon.

[A]

And today on our podcast, our interview with uiuc University of Illinois at Urbane Champagne, Urbana Urbana Champaign. I don't know, we'll go with uiuc. We'll keep it simple. If you like our show, please rate and review us on Apple products, Google Play, Spotify, Tunein, Castbox, Player FM and Podbean. Give us a follow on Facebook at BehindtheBots and tell a friend we appreciate your support. Come to the live, the lives are super fun. So Brandon, what is going on in the world of combat robotics this month? In February?

[C]

Sure.

[B]

So in this month, February, we have a lot of events happening all across the world, namely in the us, uk, Latvia, Czechia, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands. This weekend on the 21st, there'll be 13 events in the US and Europe. The routes competing in the ferry weight and BE weight classes and many other variations in between. Notable upcoming events in the month are the Motorama Robot Conflict event hosted by NERC in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Across that weekend, 2022, the RSL Robot Smashing League on the 21st in Hastings, Minnesota, the Bristol Bot Builders Beetle Brawl 28. That's a lot of these. The Segolda Robot cup held in Latvia, which includes a total of 24 classes competing, many non combat and the two combat classes on the 28th. The Robot Renegades event in Central Florida on the 28th. That is the largest event of the month with 143 robots competing across both junior and senior. Ant weights, fairy weights on their classes and all of this and more can be found on robotcommand events.com builders database.com and bristol about builders.com so now we head into our interview with our guests for the evening. UIUC's team. Welcome everybody. How are y' all doing?

[D]

Hello.

[E]

Hello.

[F]

Hello.

[A]

So we, we have been to a podcast with this many people yet, so let's go ahead and just introduce yourself. Rapid Fire. Let's do names and then something that we can identify you by.

[B]

Justin.

[F]

I'm Justin. I'm the manufacturing lead for Kill Switch and I am the builder and driver of Undertaker.

[D]

I'm Ryan. I'm the captain of the senior team and I'm known for building crack, stack, whack and quack.

[G]

I'm Jason. I'm the president of the of Irobotics. So all of the robotics clubs at uauc and yeah, I'm also co captain of the Senior team.

[C]

I'm Jacob. I'm the mechanical lead for the junior team at uac, which is currently CO Switch and I'm also the driver for CO Switch.

[A]

Okay, so let's talk about your robots. They're unique in how they're. They're all 30s, but they're all very unique. So when you guys start a project, what does that look like? What does the process in the club look like as far as iteration? How do new members come in?

[G]

I think so again, one of the main things that was brought up initially actually is each year builds their own robot. So the freshmen build their own robot, the sophomores build their own robot, the juniors build their own robot, and then obviously the seniors build their own robot. And so that means that like each year kind of has their own kind of design style, their own mentality. And that's kind of why each robot, I think, feels very different, because it's contrary to a couple of other teams. It's kind of not, not at all unified. There are different captains, different leads. The only thing that other teams can contribute to previous or next year's robots are literally just the knowledge that they have with building their robots.

[D]

To reiterate, we're essentially four teams in one tren coat. And each team kind of grows within itself throughout each year. And that's why there's a very strong identity. And also because we host Robo Brawl, one of the largest 30 pound competitions in the world, we see a lot of robots and there's a strong kind of drive to stand out there and be different.

[B]

Interesting. So it's like within your team, so you have different freshmen, sophomore, junior and senior years doing it. So basically every class is its own chance to do its 30. So it essentially, I mean, I kind of imagine you sort of like build together. Like all the freshmen did not band together because they want to destroy the seniors. And so on the other way, between the different classes. I guess this forms an interesting level of both participation, sort of like getting you into it, but you also see a level of having to learn like a steep learning curve with it. I imagine like someone never built a fighting robot before for someone who already has at least 3 years experience on them is like the freshman team have this, have like an experience of getting squashed often. Is it something where you're like finally fresh meat, or is it something where you actually see a bit parity, where teams either have access to resources or some other level to sort of make them more competitive within each other?

[D]

Yep. So this is something we've actually seen growth in over the years. So when we four years ago were freshmen, it was actually a massive accomplishment to even have a driving robot. And in time for Robo Brawl. Going from a brand new team to a driving functioning robot in just under like 6 months, ish is quite a feat. We I believe were the first team to do so in about three or four years. And by do so I mean our robot immediately got its wheel sniped by the senior team and drove into a wall. But we were driving and we see that the next year these guys in their freshman year they brought in a vertical spinner. And then every year it's just kind of gotten better and better as we keep transferring knowledge down the line.

[G]

Yeah, I was going to say this year sophomores, as in last year's freshman when they competed at Robo Brawl, they won their first actual fight. That's, that's the first time that any freshman team has won a head to head fight that wasn't just like a forfeit. So yeah, no, it's definitely. We, we are definitely seeing these floor I would say of each team definitely rising over the years.

[A]

That's cool. So what is the senior robot right now?

[D]

Senior robot?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

So someone trying to figure out which robot. Yeah, like which robot's what year right now.

[D]

Oh, of course. So the current seniors bot is Quack, which is a large modular 30 pound. At the junior level. Their current bot is Kill Switch which is a shuffling beater bar. At the sophomores they are currently working on Fish, which is a wide body vertical spinner. And lastly our current freshmen are working on a large ring spinner. And of course all of our teams are also developing other robots right now too. We can go more into that later.

[B]

Interesting. Okay.

[G]

Yeah, I mean the alumni. Regarding alumni, last year seniors were goose the 30 pound drisk.

[D]

I think it's. No, it's a beater bar.

[G]

And then also two years seniors, two year graduated seniors would be Colossal Avian. They still frequently attend NHRL. They were at Worlds last year, 2025

[B]

and that, you know, I didn't hear Undertaker in that lineup. And most people have an ear about Undertaker.

[F]

Undertaker. I'm on the junior team. I help out with Kill Switch occasionally. But Undertaker is my personal project. I started it in my sophomore year after we built our freshman robot. I've been doing this since doing this type of stuff, this B stuff since freshman year of high school. So after four or five years of doing that, figured I could build my own. I just wanted to Test it to see.

[E]

See.

[B]

Wow, look at you. Okay, okay. Mad respect for that. Going outside the system, being a little rebellious, but trying to be helpful.

[C]

Very cool.

[B]

Very cool. So. So I guess in that same way as Undertaker was a level of innovation you did personally when you, I guess, focusing on that, looking at Undertaker versus working with Kill Switch, you have a team versus, I assume, primarily individual, probably some help from friends as well. But primarily individual stuff. It seems like it. How would you say that experience has been like having two similar. But also would argue some big differences between two robots to. To look at, to think about. How did that sort of inform a bit of what you were doing, either one?

[F]

Well, I guess when. When working with Undertaker, I usually do a lot of prep work, like, months in advance. Like during the summer when, like, school's out, I got all the time in the world. I could start, like, catting stuff, orbiting parts, assembling stuff, testing stuff. All that is done mostly during the summer. And then when I come in during the semester, I can work on the team bot with Kill Switch. And sometimes, occasionally, I got a few touch ups that I need to do on my personal robot. I could do that in our school's machine shop using our water jet or mill. So that's just generally how I sort out my workflow.

[A]

Very cool.

[B]

Very cool.

[A]

Let's introduce one of your alumni. Kogan is here. Let's give it a shot, man.

[D]

All right.

[G]

All right.

[E]

No, no, no.

[A]

Yeah, feedback's really bad. I hurt myself.

[E]

I have no idea. I'm not gonna lie.

[A]

Mute the stream. You're watching. You're watching. You're watching my stream. I heard myself. Mute your mic and I muted immediately. I'm sorry. Okay, okay.

[C]

So let's.

[A]

Let's talk about. So Quack was a senior. Yeah. So let's go through.

[B]

Oh, that's crack.

[A]

That's crack. So what was crack? Because Crack was one of the robots that was featured during NHR's ESP event.

[G]

So crack, all wheel drive robot, where all the wheels are no longer mechanum. And that's basically when we were fighting at ESPN June Teams 2024, where we fight Voron. Here we are actually driving just regular wheels. And yeah, so I think Crack has been since Corn Limb from Limb at Robo brawl last year. 2025 by Roundhouse, which is an alumni robot. You may recognize Roundhouse from the actual 250 pound robot that competes on the show. Those are Irobotics alumni, which are super, super cool. They come to UIC every year. Beat the crap out of the rest of us. But yeah, like, I think that crack driving crack nowadays. My senior design project was actually trying to make crack fully autonomous, which was, you know, really, really fun. Didn't turn out too well. But, you know, you live and you learn and now crack Cracks remains is on a shelf at the espl.

[A]

So was it. Was it Mexican or. Sorry, was it Mecanum drive during teams? No, this is. This is standard drive.

[G]

It's a standard. Yeah, the.

[D]

Yeah, money was on the line. So

[B]

as it is many things in life.

[D]

Yeah, it didn't matter too much. We were using off the shelf Bane box gearboxes and we very quickly found out that they are not made to a high degree of quality and their internal carriers just rounded over. That's why we lost drive and everything, including the hammer.

[B]

That would do it. But you also. So you also mentioned this is on a shelf. So tell us a bit about some of the resources and stuff behind iRobotics because it seems like you've already mentioned earlier, the combat team is one part you mentioned earlier, Jason. The comment team is one part of it. But iRobotics is much bigger body itself. So I was curious the structure of that looks like especially how it relates to combat.

[G]

So I. Robot robotics. It currently represents seven different competition teams. Obviously we have our current four combo teams, but we also have a active PackBots team. PackBots is basically PAC man, but like in real life, it's a tiny little robot that's about this, this big, drives around a arena and actually just plays Pac man in real life. It's super, super cool. We are super dominant in it. We go to Harvard almost every year. We beat the crap out of everyone. The best, best PackBots teams. I think it's your third year in a row winning. And then we also have micromouse, Micromaster project team that was developed last year. We're competing at the National Robotics Challenge. We also have robosub. Robosub is, I would say, it's really difficult to explain. It's autonomous underwater robotics. It's a robot that you drop into water around like 60ft depth and it completes challenges. I think there's a movie about it. But all of those teams are actively competing. We also have a couple of smaller teams that are being developed right now. We have autonomous Kart series, which is a competition that's hosted at Purdue every year. We have just secured funding to build a autonomous go kart, basically to drive around a test track, compete with a couple other colleges as well as well as the 250 we are something that we're currently planning on. Justin is the captain of that new team where we're actually planning on building a £250 battlebot.

[B]

Oh, battlebots, you say? Well, well, well. So you have all these 30 pounders and you think to yourself, mid not good enough. So you want a full on battlebot team. All right, all right, all right, all right. That's exciting. I suppose with that, unless you want to, you know, keep all that under wraps as you prepare for the upcoming whatever seasons battlebot wants to do or destructathons, whatever. What are the general ideas? Have you, I guess as far as the planning going, in your experience, have you found it similar to 30s different from 30s? The how is the experience treating you versus the other 30 pound robots? That seems like a very good lead up to it, but I imagine still some learning done. Justin, comparing to 250.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. Versus 30.

[F]

So I've done bigger scale robots before. Like 85 pound is the heaviest I've built so far. So the, the difference in scale is like you have to always have people like you need more manpower essentially the bigger, the bigger you go with the box. But also you have to go. You have to think about the logistics and the planning. And the CAD is also a lot of work because you. A lot of, a lot of money on the right. These parts are really expensive. You have to order them, you have to get close for them and there's, there's just more planning that goes into the CAD base of a 250 as opposed to 30 pound where you. It is still, it's still quite expensive, but you could, you could prototype one a little bit more cheaply than.

[B]

Okay, okay. As part of the designing, have you noticed any sort of like skill? I guess depending on how far you are in designing or planning for it, you can let me know. But is there any sort of big differences you notice with that too? Like similar, different. And the big part's obviously big factor, but like bigger motors versus battery size and so on and so forth.

[F]

You have to, you have to be more careful about what you're specing out because I know we go into higher voltages at 250 pounds, so I just want, I'm more careful about like the calculations I'm running for a bigger, more expensive robot as opposed to like a 30 pound robot.

[B]

Yeah, that makes sense. Definitely. For sure.

[A]

We're gonna do a break real quick, been about 15 minutes and diagnose this little audio thing and we'll be right Back. We're watching more fights. Thank you guys for joining us on the live. We'll be back in just a sec. Thanks.

[E]

All right, guys, My name is Kogan Banarian. I am a former Irobotics president, and now I graduated in May 2025. Now I'm continuing running Goose, who I started on as my junior year robot. And I've. I'm on Goose V3 now, I guess, which is what I took to World Championship 2025. So, yeah, I'm just the captain and driver of Goose.

[A]

So where did Goose come from originally? How did you, like, start developing that? You said you started as a junior, right?

[E]

Oh, actually, no, that's not. I. I lied. I started my sophomore year. So sophomore year of college, or, sorry, freshman year of college was the first year after Covid. And so iRobotics as a club then was kind of in shambles. I mean, it was just in a rough space, as most things were after Covid. So things started really to pick up, to pick up our sophomore year, and we sort of were like, after a pretty miserable freshman year, robot that didn't move and went.05 against a cardboard box. Losing to a static cardboard box.

[B]

Oh, man.

[E]

After that, we sort of went back to the basics, and we're like, okay, how can we make, like, something that we're pretty confident will work? And so that's what Goose V won was. And I think we took that to February, nhrl. And that year we also came third in Robo Brawl. So that was like, our sophomore year, we came third in Robo Brawl, so that was like our sign of success. From there. We kept iterating on it. We went to NHRL, competed in Robo Brawl 2024, and ended up coming in first place in Robo Brawl 2024. And then we kind of knew we were on the right track. But as we started becoming more familiar with nhrl, we knew that a full redesign was underway. So our senior year, we, at the end of our junior year and beginning of senior year, we've redesigned Goose, brought it to nhrl and to robobrel 2025. And after those couple of fights, it was in rough shambles, and I had just graduated, moved to Chicago, and I was like, well, I don't want to bring a terrible robot to the World Championship, so. Oh, yeah. So that's the og yeah. But I didn't want to bring a terrible robot to the World Championship, so I decided to do another redesign, this time with a actual functioning counter gyro flywheel.

[A]

Oh, I Remember watching. I remember watching you spin this up for the first time at NHL is very cool to watch. So how is that working and where is it in the robot?

[E]

So I mean that is a very old photo and let me just grab the robot here. One second.

[B]

Whoa. This is why you turn the podcast on stream. Get to watch this. This is it. This is it, boys.

[E]

This is Goose after the emulsifier fight, which has some very beautiful and has not. Not been touched. But flywheel sits right here behind the weapon and it's just a 4 inch steel mass that spins at around 40,000 rpm. Although I have not tacked it, so that is theoretical and. But I do plan on attacking it. It was just. But we. The goal is obviously to do the counter gyro and it has been a long struggle where we have set three ESCs on fire and I think we have a, we have a kind of joke within a robotics of the total number of ESCs killed and my team is the winner by a lot.

[B]

So what, what is that final number? If you could give us a some insight there.

[E]

We do multiple point system where if you kill a drive esc, it's one point and then if you kill a weapon esc, which is usually like a Mamba Monster X, it's three points and I think we're total to like nine or ten points.

[B]

Nine points, man.

[E]

Ten points.

[B]

Yeah,

[E]

it's not. And it's pretty bad.

[B]

That's so expensive.

[E]

And the flywheel itself is responsible for six of those, so.

[B]

Oh. So all right. So like. All right, go ahead.

[A]

Yeah, so I was going to ask for those of you in the audience who aren't familiar with the technicals of a counter rotation flywheel like that. So how do you do the initial math for that? How much of the gyro are you canceling? What does that look like?

[E]

So the nice thing about the math is it kind of scales very nicely where you know, it's all like, you know, you take like the inertia and like all the complicated stuff, but it ends up just being two things that are squared. So if. Would you scale speed essentially like the moi is proportional to the speed. So if you take a third of the moi, but you make it three times faster, it's a moment of inertia

[B]

for those at home.

[E]

Yeah, yeah. Moment of inertia and the math ends up working out. I may have said that entirely, but imagine that it's something like that and it's not that complicated is what I'm trying to say. But so all. All this is, is I have a six pound weapon and a one pound flywheel that is about. That is about a tenth of the moi of the weapon. But I'm spinning it three times faster, so I end up getting about a 30% gyro cancel.

[A]

Oh.

[E]

But that's assuming those things are full speed. So it's a lot easier for me to run the flywheel at full speed than the weapon because obviously, like battery and current draw. So in practice, a 30 gyro cancel is ends up being plenty. And when I was testing this at nhrl, kept it planted to the floor pretty well.

[A]

So in what fights you're going, you're

[B]

not a little bit there. Can you hold your mic closer?

[A]

Yeah.

[E]

Oh, yeah. Well, that's the thing is I never really got to test it. So in the two fights where I was working at finals was against Kabui Tango and against Emulsifier. But in the Kabui Tango fight, I didn't spin it up at the beginning because I was nervous. And then I lost my sight of drive, so I couldn't really actually put it to use after the first like 20 seconds of the fight or even less than that. And then against Emulsifier. Well, I mean, you can just watch the fight against the multiplier.

[A]

So is it running there when you come out of the box? No. You. It's not.

[E]

No.

[A]

I can see it kind of.

[E]

No. Yeah. It wasn't running coming out of the box. And then that hit didn't just. I'm like crab walking right now. It just bent my wedgelet down and high centered that side of the drive.

[B]

I remember watching this. I was. I felt bad because I knew that you were like, functionally still there, but I couldn't do much.

[E]

Yeah.

[B]

At that point.

[E]

Well, apparently a little secret tip that I didn't know is that blue loctite breaks when the planes get really cold, so. Oh yeah, that's what happened.

[B]

So it did. So the December. December weather took you out?

[E]

December weather took me out. I didn't. I lost a lot of the bolts in my front wedge. Lets in just as I was literally spinning up the weapon.

[A]

And so, yeah, out of the. It went in the. The plane. It came out of the plane. And because it wasn't. It wasn't warm in the luggage, it broke the blue loctite.

[E]

Yeah, like it cracked all the blue loctite.

[A]

No kidding. And so, geez, I had.

[E]

No, no. The only bolt that I had holding in my wedge litz on either side was a single at the end of the Kabui Tango fight was a single quarter 20. That single quarter 20 with a nylock on the end of it going through. Uhmw. All of the bolts in my frame did weren't like they were just not there. It's not like their heads popped off or something. They just didn't.

[B]

Yeah, they just. They just left it. That's rough.

[A]

That's so.

[D]

That's left.

[B]

Dude.

[A]

That is a crazy way to find that out. That's wild.

[E]

Yeah.

[B]

But to your credit though, I mean, in the fight with Kablooi, you're still able to try to do your best keeping the weapon towards the opponent. Getting some good, like, angle shots there, but I definitely see why you'd be a little disappointed.

[E]

Yeah, it was a good fight. I mean, it's one of those things where I did not do great at Worlds, but I'm overall pretty happy with how the, like, my robot performed. And I kind of know, like, I'll definitely be back with this version of Goose. Even though it definitely took a lot of beating from Emulsifier.

[B]

Yeah, the emulsifier fight, it's really brutal, dude.

[E]

So, yeah, this is a good example of why I told you guys earlier I was starting to try hard in a plant because I think if I was more confident in my driving and just wasn't like scared of Emulsifier, I think I actually, I mean, I could have at least done more than just sit there and like pray, you know,

[B]

he did launch you up a three walls in the last concussive hit.

[A]

Yeah.

[E]

But I would just focus on staying squared up. And I think this maybe the second time this has happened. I finally learned my lesson that you can't really go up into weapon with. With a multiplier.

[B]

It's definitely very hard. For sure.

[A]

They tease that special.

[E]

This version of Goose cannot go weapon to weapon with Emulsifier.

[B]

Fair enough.

[A]

Fair enough. You think that's an RPM issue or do you think that's a geometry issue or.

[E]

I have yet to actually spend the time to diagnose, but I would guess it is an RPM issue. I think my five tooth beater bar has like a ton of drag and I'm not spinning as fast as I think I am.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

Oh, wow. Oh, wow. In an old school fight, you were so. You were so. This fight we have is Moccasin versus Goose. So in this old school fight, you have the Gen1 goose fighting. You know, Moccasin, the mini mammoth with its rotary lifter and cam lifter. Oh, yeah, yeah, that Is a very old fight. It is.

[E]

This is a very old fight.

[B]

Wow.

[E]

Actually I was just gonna say in that fight we lose a set of drive because we decided to add cleats out of mild steel right before the fight. And they were not very happy after getting thrown around the arena and quickly jammed up. So don't worry.

[B]

It's like between. Between Goose especially, what would you say kept similarity, like what ideas would you say continued with each version?

[E]

So after the addition of the Flywheel, the attempted edition of the flywheel and goose v2, so I guess the version that fought Voreon and fought whack earlier in 2025, after I tried to make a flywheel on that robot, I decided to stick with it. And then the only thing I would say that's really stayed the same is four wheel drive, obviously and the five tooth beater bar. Only because I think it's moderately interesting.

[B]

And theoretically interesting.

[E]

Yeah, theoretically it cuts through plastic better. But I've yet to actually I have one fight where I would say I put that into use, but it has not never really made a difference there.

[B]

I do, I do say like the. The flywheel anti gyro is an underrated attribute. I would certainly say certainly one from learning and I guess for bringing rest of the UIUC team into it. So like in Robo Brawl, all of your robots have fought. All of your robots have done a lot of learning to these matches. I think Ryan, you mentioned earlier it's like the largest 30 pound event. It's right. It definitely one of the largest in the United States by far. I can't think of any other international ones.

[G]

It's the largest one in the US and like second behind one of the basically like a professionally produced Mechmania out in Great Britain.

[B]

Ah, impressive. So very impressive.

[A]

How did Robo Borel. So one thing like working with a college and working with a college team. How did Robo Brawl kind of come to be? Who supported it on staff? How did you actually go through the mechanics of getting that big of an OR event off the ground?

[G]

So yeah, we are actually Robo Brawl, typically last year and all previous years is an exhibit underneath Engineering Open House. Engineering Open House is the largest kind of science fair hosted by college under. Yeah, still under uiuc we have frequently existed as an exhibit. So we work with them to bring audience members to our school and actually showcasing Robo Brawl. So I think the actual event of Robo Brawl started back in like 2015, 2017, basically just people wanted to compete 15 pound robots back then. And then every year since then, obviously, with the exception of COVID we've competed a growing amount of robots almost every year. Robo Brawl X, which is 20, 20, 25, which marking its 10th anniversary, was its largest to date. 30 competitors there, 32 robots showed up and we were super, super excited. Yeah, we work frequently with the university, we're working with the engineering open house directors, we're working with sponsors as well to actually like get money to build an arena. Every year, that arena, I won't talk too much about it. This year I started failing. The four panels kind of got dinged up. Those are the same ones that are, that were used back in 2017. I have old pictures of that same metal flare being used. And so this year we're actually overhauling everything. I'm not super involved with the development this year, but I know that they're working super, super hard replacing all of that, righting the wrongs. And we're super, super excited to. Yeah, but every team competes at Robo Brawl for the freshman. It is their first event. That's the their kind of target. They don't compete at NHL until their sophomore year. Just kind of the way the scheduling works out, it makes it a lot more sense for them to do that. And so, yeah, Rogue raws it's super, super fun. I think it's super, super exciting to basically bring a bunch of collegiate teams that have almost never. You'll never see these robots competing at NHL. Very, very infrequently, super expensive to get a team, you know, of these robots to Connecticut to begin with. Right. And so you have colleges from nearby Midwestern colleges. We had USC bring 8th on last year. But mostly it's robots that would never really make the trip because it's so expensive. Trust me, I know the, the finances. But they're able to show up the robber all and bring these super, super exciting robots. And I really, really enjoy it.

[A]

Let's push to a quick break real quick. We're gonna break for like two, three minutes and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna watch some fights from Robo Brawl. Love hearing it. You ice. You see, guys. Thank you. Be right back. Foreign. We're back with uiuc. They just sent us a treasure trove of in progress robot photos and we're going to be taking a look at some of those and we're going to be watching some of their fights as well. Let's start with. This is a newer robot that came to. It just fought, right? It just fought at February what is this robot? Correct. This is bizarre, man.

[D]

Wow. This robot is quack. What it actually is, is a scaled up version of my championship £1 robot right here. So I've kind of worked in the one pound space for about a year or so developing this kind of modular weapon concept, and I finally scaled it up to the 30 pound. As many people know, Comet Robotics is a very rock, paper, set, scissors kind of game. And this allows us to essentially choose what hand we throw against any opponent.

[B]

This is interesting.

[A]

One of the strangest robots I've ever looked at. So, okay, so you've got four different fronts. This is bizarre.

[B]

This is great.

[A]

I love this robot. Oh, my gosh. So you've got four different fronts. You've got a horizontal, you've got a reach vertical, all vert. Yeah, you got a small vert, the reach vert. And then you've got this, a beater bar. What? What's going on? How do you change this out? What does a construction of this robot even look like on the inside?

[D]

Of course. So I did send a. An image of the frame in our chat. But essentially, if you look at the beater bar there, if you see those four kind of pink circles on the top, those are actually the ends of pins. So we unscrew those pins and knock them out. And then you can see on each of the modules, there's four corresponding holes in each corner and they simply slot into them. So that image doesn't actually have the. We have welded gussets that accept it.

[E]

That kind of.

[B]

So you have a great cab. So kind of like for other fans at home, like Ribbot has a very big front end that bolts into the robot and take out the 250. So quack is very similar. You have a very large front area where you then put the weapon cavities into, and then from there they attach to the main body through primary structure points.

[D]

That is correct. I'm seeing if I can find an image right now. But most when I'm working on these, my hands are covered in grease and metal, so I don't want to touch my phone.

[B]

It's fair. So I guess going good.

[A]

Is this a whole, uh. So for the, for the horizontal module, this is a UHMW billet that you've got going on here.

[D]

So that is a piece that's only the front. So, okay, I made it our kind of goal to have anything that could be impacted made out of UHMW. So it's an AR bottom, carbon fiber top, and then that's 2 inch thick. UHMW, that we then water jet and that's it right there. And essentially holds the structure square while being a. An offer.

[G]

Wow.

[B]

Impressive. Very impressive. So then with that are the parts inside of the structures that power the whole weapon? Like how much integration does it have to do with the rest of the chassis? Or is it like two separate robots bolted together?

[D]

It's essentially two separate robots bolted together with just an umbilical cord of power and signal going across them. So it has its own ESC and motor contained within.

[A]

Oh.

[B]

So each mod is very nice.

[A]

You can change out the ESC with the module?

[D]

Theoretically, yes. We can theoretically swap out a module in probably a minute or two, provided that things line up perfectly on which module you put the robot. But we can do it really quickly.

[B]

Interesting. So, so going with that. Looking at quack, it's a very wide robot. So to those who looking at it, it's probably maybe 2 foot wide abouts like it looks very big.

[E]

Like.

[D]

So the wheel base itself is about 2ft and with the side armor on 26, with the wings on 34 inches wide.

[B]

Geez dude. So this is, this is a great example of containing the opponent. This is a max control wide box. Definitely your main focus here. And so it's definitely feeling like that too. I noticed you said before it's like AR bottom. Sorry, yeah, AR bottom, carbon top. So what other kind of structural decision did you have to make to have something this wide?

[D]

If you can see in some of the photos of the frame, every single component on the entire robot is optimized within an inch of its life to be as light as physically possible. So the internal frame rails are super lightened and they're strengthened by the overall structure. So the carbon fiber top and bottom and then the welded AR gussets, which are not pictured right here, hold everything in square. And so it's not any individual component, it's the entire thing as a whole that gives it strength.

[A]

Kind of like a, like a external frame.

[B]

Is there a fear at all that like how, I guess should say, how sensitive do you think this is to being hit? Because if I were ever to imagine something that's wide might make it more spindly. I remember talking to Adam Wrigley with shatter and knockoff white and like the chassis of knockoff white he said was very, very weak, like it was there, obviously could handle stuff, but he feared if anyone hit it, it would explode and die. So in this case a quack, like do you have that kind of fear as well? As someone got to be on, like through the side armor or the weapon or something like that.

[D]

I see many people have made concerns over this, but I've had a very long time to develop the overall frame in the 1 pound scale. And my 1 pound is incredibly durable, and I feel like it's translated very well. In our fight, we took multiple hits, the underside, and there was no damage. It was just simply plastites pulling out.

[B]

Oh, great. Very good.

[A]

We fought Emperor and fought Phenomenon. Correct. So you ran the beater here. Probably the. Probably the best choice against the horizontal. That makes total sense.

[D]

The model was correct. The driving was not. I may not have put my pulley directly into their weapon blade.

[B]

Oh, great. For a shot. You throwing Emperor around first. Two exchanges.

[D]

Very nice. In that first engagement, he actually immediately sniped my weapon belt. That second hit, you see, was simply the residual energy stored in the weapon after the first hit. And I will say photo right now. You will see that. You'll see the reason why the match came to an end and that it was enough to significantly damage their system.

[A]

Oh, my gosh.

[B]

Look at the bar.

[D]

Wow.

[B]

Oh, wow. You bent that thing and looks like.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

Looks like it's banana'd. So, Emperor's bar. So clearly the beater bar works. Great. Great sign of that.

[D]

So now we've developed a pulley guard technology.

[A]

Nice, nice. I. I support that. Oh, my gosh. Here, I'm going to open this. Look at that bar.

[B]

Oh, my. Yeah, Emperor's Bars.

[A]

Yeah. That's awesome.

[B]

That bar is deflected maybe an inch, like at the tip, the core. Yeah, it's pretty nuts.

[A]

I've got a question. What the hell is going on with this desk?

[E]

This.

[A]

I haven't seen this ever. What is going on?

[B]

What the hell? Things bolted together. It looks like your little question. What the hell?

[D]

So essentially, I don't like bunny ears. I feel like they appear. They actually kind of interfere with self writing a lot of the time. They get dunked into your weapon. So you see, on my one pound, I run a disc. The disc itself acts like a massive wheel to light itself. Right. And that was the intention going into this, where it's an AR blade and we attach aluminum onto it to make it a disc. So it's overall a lighter structure. And if the arms get damaged, we can swap them out very easily. Unfortunately, when I was designing it originally, I put my center of mass analysis on only the weapon bar instead of on the entire structure.

[A]

Added a filler in the back before

[D]

we left for nhrl, I had to go and emergency water jet in that counter. What you see on the other side,

[A]

that's super duper cool. Cool, Interesting.

[D]

So our module runs an internal gearbox along with a large reduction and a massively oversized motor. So it's a castle 1717 with a 9 to 1 reduction. So we don't even need it. Actually. We took it off and it self writes just fine.

[G]

I mean you can see that in the fight against Phenomenon, we're not running that.

[B]

Oh, it was this bar.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. Yes. We just.

[B]

Oh, interesting. Okay.

[D]

Phenomenon fight against self bright. Because the internal gearbox, I accidentally water jet one of the holes too small. So I had to instead of putting in a large needle roller bearing to support our gearbox shaft, it was this tiny little Amazon bearing we rush ordered in that very exploded and we lost tension on the pulley and that's why we had the issue.

[B]

Yeah, that feels.

[A]

That feels like so classic thing. Okay, so you weren't running it in this fight?

[B]

Yes, so. So, yeah, I definitely never saw it.

[A]

So I'm watching, I'm watching this fight. I'm at home and I'm cheering. You know, I've got my, my Brandon Bennett Young fathead. I've got my Brandon Bennett Young sign. I've got all the, my, all my merchandise. And I got scared when this fight started. Because you had the wedge on Brandon, were you expecting the horizontal here?

[B]

Yes and no. I kind of think like I knew they had a horizontal, they showed the horizontal. So I was like, okay, it might run the horizontal. Kind of dumb. They didn't run the horizontal. But even when they didn't run the horizontal, I was like, it probably would end the same job anyway. So I didn't bother trying to like switch in the forks either. I accepted that the wedge would probably be just as efficient.

[A]

Okay, okay.

[B]

In this case it would be yes.

[D]

Yeah, that. I believe that the matchup was in our favor, but due to some small details, it didn't quite go our way. So the first thing is I also designed the forks for Undertaker, which as we know are very effective as shown in his world's run. In that I sprung load his forks, but I forgot to do so with my own forks, hence losing the first contact. And then the second issue is we purchased our AR at an immense discount off of ebay. It turns out that was a mistake. It is not exactly hard. So even though we outreached Brandon when we hit his wedge, where typical AR would have dug in or done something, our extremely soft metal just kind of stuck Splattered on impact. And we can see like our.

[A]

Our.

[D]

This also appeared in our other robots, too. They're running the same metal, such as fish. Our teeth are just sheared off and there's dents everywhere. So we're replacing that.

[A]

So. So what you. So what AR did you get?

[D]

I do not buy. What's it called, Hardware 500 from Harness Steel Hardware.

[B]

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hardware 500

[D]

off of eBay? The price is so good, unfortunately.

[A]

I'm sure it is, but it.

[B]

Wait, so it was. So it was not abrasion resistant. It was hardware.

[D]

It says abrasion resistant on it. That's it. The second one down there. Yep, that's it.

[A]

This is what got you. All right. PSA hardware that.

[B]

Oh, these wedges were made out of two.

[D]

So that may also explain other interesting.

[A]

You know what?

[B]

I see what you mean. The price.

[A]

3 by 812 by 48 for 127 bucks.

[B]

I would have fallen for this too, before.

[A]

I would have fallen for this too.

[B]

Yeah, that's very tempting.

[G]

Got it.

[D]

That being said, when we made mistakes and Brandon's such an incredible driver, he just capitalized on it immediately, and that's. That's props to him.

[A]

Got it.

[B]

Now you just. You just threw as simple as that.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Phenomenon was only living just because of a few mistakes on your end. I would say that you stacked the cards as well in your favor as you could. I will say that the. I will say, however, when you struck Phenomenon's wedge, I've only saw two. One main mark in the wedge, maybe two you have to side. Obviously, it's like the real guard is where the drives part was, and you sort of when just above it. But the part you hit on the wedge actually was the part above it. It was one of the back kickbacks. So it wasn't. It wasn't like the main body of the wedge you hit. You hit like the thing above the wedge, and it actually bent backwards. So it kind of also, like. Also energy. Yeah. So it. It didn't bite. It couldn't transfer any force into the robot, in short. So that's part of why Phenomenon say so planted even during the shot. And it marched. It largely was hitting that like the. The force vector put Phenomenon into the ground as opposed to off of the ground. I think that only would have worked if it was fully on the forex feed to, like, uppercut at that point.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

But I still think the robot in general is pretty solid. But I am also, though, curious, perhaps looking between the two different Vert like disk configurations that you have because I did not notice a smaller one. I knew the beater, I knew the tall vert, but I not know it was a small vert. And I guess I was curious of what the the logic was between those two different configurations especially I'd assume they'd be used in similar cases, but probably not of course.

[D]

So the issue with so the big weapon has incredible reach and power, but as all big verts are, they're relatively frail. So going weapon on a weapon with a large beater could have potentially warp the uprights or crack the carbon fiber bottom plate. So we essentially took all the extra weight and put it into being as tanky as possible. So whereas that big vert has a quarter inch carbon fiber bottom plate, the small vert has a quarter inch aluminum bottom plate and it does not have a gearbox. Instead it has a 1.5 times reduction on a much smaller weapon, lending it an incredibly high tip speed that I cannot disclose. But it's meant to be any bar on the face of the planet. And hit it with just massive taper roller bearings, 3/4 inch AR that we found in a shed.

[A]

Nice, dude. Which the shed is more reliable than ebay. The shed is better than ebay.

[D]

So purchased by our alumni and it has other weapons cut out of it. So I'm assuming it's AR.

[E]

Oh yeah, that's good AR. That's good AR. I know that AR.

[B]

The shed AR versus the eBay shakes hand. That's the good one. That's the good stuff.

[G]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, okay. Shed ar though

[B]

you mentioned your alumni sort of dancing around a little bit here. So you kind of alluded to this earlier during the break, but who was your alumni for like uiuc? Like the. It was like a long history of it or. History.

[E]

Yeah.

[B]

So

[E]

Robo Brawl, as Jason mentioned, was started in 2015 and it was actually started by the members of Robo Gym Robotics who you may know from the BattleBots TV show. They did deadlift and have more recently made the 250 pound roundhouse and they've actually continued to compete at Robo Brawl for the past, for a while. I mean I, I can't think they have not missed one in a bit. So they bring the 30 pound robot roundhouse and they bring another one called Lockout and they kind of have a legacy of helping us out, doing design reviews with us. And so yeah, it's really cool to be able to have some mentors within the club system that are, you know, willing to help us out Whenever we need.

[B]

That's really sick. That's really cool. Shout out to Robo Jim. I know they did trick the thons as well,

[E]

so.

[B]

Really cool. Really cool.

[A]

This is kind of a question. I graduated from UC with my Ms. Two years ago, and, you know, I'm still kind of hanging around because I work at UC now.

[D]

But what do you think?

[A]

Like, what do you think an alumni's role should be and what should we seek to do? You know, kind of what I'm internally struggling with is, like, how much involvement should alumni have versus how much should the club just kind of, like, continue to exist? Because, like, I'm still obviously fighting and, like, I know other alumni are fighting, but, like, where do you see UI's alumni in that?

[E]

Well, I think including myself in this statement, we still, like, you know, competing, obviously. And Colossal Avian is another successful U of I alumni that has, you know, occasionally pops up in the Discord server. But we're definitely not the driving force anymore. And I like that. Like, you know, there was a time and place, it was amazing to be part of the club, but it's also to be good doing my own thing now. And I think pretty much that's how all of the alum feels. For the most part, everyone's pretty hands off. And I think irobotics as a whole does a good job nurturing that from the beginning, because we have that class divide. Like, it starts, you start as a freshman and then you move to a sophomore, junior, and senior on the freshman team. It's already pretty hands off from the upperclassmen, so people are used to being able to figure things out on their own and just, you know, reach out when they need help. But, you know, we try to foster that, like, individual pursuit of success in combat robots.

[A]

That's cool. I really. That's so cool that you guys have it divided up by year. That's got me thinking a lot about how, you know, as a new sport, like, kind of unclear what this structure looks like, and everybody's doing something different. And I think that adds a lot of value and a lot of continuity annuity between the years.

[E]

I would also like to add. We got. We have dpd. If Ryan would like to talk about that a little bit.

[A]

Yeah. Would you guys like to show your sponsors real quick? All right. Sponsor time. Sorry.

[D]

I thought so me and. I'll let Jacob go more into this in a second, but me and Jacob, we are the coordinators of a programming I have called dpd or Design, Print Destroy. It's Essentially our one pound kind of build and fight competition, if you want to go more into that. Jacob.

[C]

Yeah, so we have, we have a few competitions every semester, usually plan competitions. And then about once a year we'll do a full competition as well, where we have like weekly meetings where we teach people how to, how to do cad, how to do, like general intro to designing for combo robotics, and then get to work on designing their own robot in teams of like one or two, usually. And then we'll have design reviews and provide electronics kits. We don't have to pay for this. And then we host again competitions for plants like two or three times a semester usually, which are also then open to outside competitors. So we usually get like 15 or so in total competitors and maybe 10 more outside competitors at a given event.

[D]

We could essentially summarize this down as my elevator pitch for it. I will teach you how to build a combat robot. I will teach you how to cat it, and then I will pay for it. And you get to build and fight it. What's not to love? And we find that anyone who competes in this £1 kind of competition, the cycle time is so much shorter, so you'll learn so much faster with much less risk of failure. And we find that they always come out to build the best spots. Everyone here has all competed in dpd, and I think the results somewhat speak for themselves.

[C]

And then the other thing is, I do know there's some other clubs that have like a, like an intro, like you have to go through and build a plant or build a Beetle or something before they move on to 30s. We don't have that where you're welcome to just really do DPD or just move directly onto the 30 pounds again, starting this fresh run. But I think it definitely helps a lot with teaching people of the interest stuff. A lot of times we see a lot of the people who have been most involved in the 30s have been people who've done DPD. I think all the drivers have started out as people who got driving practice through running plants in dpd.

[A]

UC is in its second year of running a plant, and it's been like one of the best moves the club has ever made. Just because it allows people to have a logical entry point that's not intimidating. It's a quick turnaround time and it's just, it's fun, it's good. They're inexpensive and they're. They're fun. And that's why we're here. Damn it.

[B]

So see?

[A]

Yeah, that's cool.

[B]

See, then you have like leatherbacks and then leatherbacks first of all is how it like got stronger was playing competitions. They still run into this day pretty much the entire lifetime at the club. They're also sweats like the. The captains are also incredibly good. They've gone to local events and swept entire divisions. And notable shout out to builders who learned from that club such as three pound and trouble champion Alex Wang and 12 pound number one seed Liam King. Two great examples of practicing a lot.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So I recommend as well. So if you are in the Illinois area or going to fly to Illinois for this, then do it epd.

[A]

If you're a new builder, do plants. Do plants. Do plants the best. The people at the top are doing plants and you should do every time.

[D]

That's wise advice.

[A]

Yeah.

[E]

We also y' all also do the 2v2 bracket. Should talk about that thing that we

[C]

get from running DBD is we try to start doing a few more sort of experimental comps. So just recently, last year we tried a new format that's sort of inspired by like First Robotics style alliances where we have a number of like ranking rounds and then the highest ranks get to pick teams to be on their alliance. And then there's a single elimination bracket with those alliances where we have two robots in. In each fight on a team against another two robots. So we're actually just this weekend going to do the second run of DPD Alliances and then in a row of world. This year we're actually usually we do a DBD competition but this year because we're doing it not during EOH, not associated with the school things, we're running £12 and 2v2£3 with the same sort of alliance format that we've tested at

[D]

DVD and registration is still open in the Midwest area. Please sign up at Robo Brawl.

[A]

Do you guys want to plug your link real quick?

[G]

I'll toss it. Yeah, I'll toss it. I'll toss it. Give me a second.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[G]

It's just Robo Brawl.

[A]

Let's watch some fights from Robo Brawl. I think that's a good idea. So you've sent this fight. This is Harold versus Crack.

[B]

What a great line out of context too.

[G]

So this was sophomore year. Sophomore year where we're competing against I believe University of Southern Indiana. I. I might be wrong about Illinois, but. Oh, sorry. Whatever he said.

[B]

But yeah.

[G]

So this is crack when it's actually still using mechanisms as well. The last competition work has. So you're able to see it straight a little bit. I'm a terrible driver. So I'm still not really driving it perfectly. But in this fight against Harold, Harold is running a sheet metal top plate, which does not end well for it.

[B]

Oh, immediate fire.

[A]

That's so cool.

[B]

Straight to the battery.

[A]

So cool.

[G]

Yeah, they duct taped their lipos to the top plate, so when we hit them from the top, they combusted. My favorite memory about this is obviously, yeah, one, we blew up a robot. And then two, immediately afterwards, I had a lab demo that I had to get to. So I, you know, I high five. I party with Ryan for about, like, maybe five seconds, and then I run out of there to catch our bus to go, come back. And by the time we come back, you know, an hour later, the fire department is on their way out after, you know, clearing out the area, because that lipo. That lipo fire basically took out Robo Brawl for about three hours. I think two or three hours. We smoked out the entire arena. We had to, you know, do the traditional fire safety. And after this event, this was 2024 for 2025, we were like, okay, we can't let this happen again. That'd be horrible for our schedule. Imagine if NHRL just, like, decided to stop, you know, all of their fights for two hours just because there was a lipo fire. So now we have it in this news. Sort of not new arena, but we have a new ventilation system such that when things catch fire, you know, it's not as bad.

[A]

But.

[G]

Yeah, I mean, you guys can talk about kill switching.

[A]

We just had. We just went through drama at the UC Makerspace because the EV team wanted to weld batteries on site, and we told them absolutely not. And, yeah, I. I see why. Yeah. I can't believe you're all eh. And s is not.

[E]

It's just.

[G]

Okay.

[D]

Oh, my gosh.

[A]

I put a dent in the floor. Look, your beater hit the floor and put a dent in it right there.

[B]

Here.

[C]

Because part of the goal of what we're doing with Kill Switch is like knowing as a shuffler, we didn't really know how fast we're going to be. We're assuming we're really kind of slow. Part of what we're trying to do is make the weapon system beefy enough that we can spin down against verts and attempt to potentially break them. So into this, we were spinning down. That first hit, us spinning down pushed Goose into the floor so hard, that goose is the one that made that dent there.

[B]

Oh, my gosh. Oh, you machined the floor. You machined the floor.

[D]

So for some context, These panels are 0.1 of an inch thick and they weigh probably 80 to 120 pounds each and it's enough to pull them up. So this year we're unfortunately these floors are rather old. I think over time layers of rust and grinding the rust off has kind of thinned them. So we have a whole new floor for this year. As we said earlier, thicker floor, better mounting and we're welding all the seams so this never happens again. So we live and we learn, but nothing. No safety incidents ever. Nope, Nope.

[A]

That's super cool.

[D]

We have three layers of polycarbonate in this. No breaches ever. No cracks ever.

[B]

You guys are great. First of all, oh no, that's weird. But as for kill switch, again, I want to roll this back. You designed it to spin down on diverts so you tested it by hitting down onto Goose. So you designed two beater bars smashing together and you're like, yeah, that's like first move. Let's just do that. Yep, let's go gambling.

[C]

Thing is this was first inspired by, by Copperhead by a video talking about how I think it was in game that they beat by spinning down to break their word. So yeah, part of what we're trying to do with it was make it so that we had the option to spin down. So we just have just basically part of what we're doing to solve this is we should have more needle roller bearings. We have like two one inch needle roller bearings on each side of the beater plus three quarter in or yeah, three quarter inch aluminum uprights. And just generally a not, not the most moi. Efficient of beaters with the intent of being able to spin down into other birds and hopefully break the rest of this weapon system. And then the other thing we noticed in this fight against Goose actually was that first hit we entirely ripped their front fork off because they had sort of like a, like an L shaped fork where the like the top part. Yeah, the barbed and we managed to catch that barb and just fully rip the fork mount out. So part of what we noticed there too is like a lot of people don't design their front end to be able to withstand hits from like scooping down. So there's certain bots where we might be able to hit the front end geometry such that it's tears up their forks. Or in the case of Red Storm, that was a really fun fight. We actually able to fully backflip over them and then get a shot directly on the back wheel.

[B]

That was oh all by design. Of course because of.

[C]

Because we were spinning down for that. That was another one where mainly against Red Storm, we're not really gonna. We're not gonna be able to outmaneuver him. It's. It's Red Storm and it's Ki driving.

[A]

But so in which fights were you upside down? Red Storm mostly.

[C]

Red Storm and Goose are the main two ones that we've been like intentionally. The other thing is like we probably want to start spinning up but one of the big advantages of.

[A]

Oh wow, look at that. You can see the beater start the wrong direction. That's so cool.

[C]

We can just.

[B]

He also was somehow teleported that fast. Sorry, go ahead.

[C]

So the other. Yeah, the other nice thing about it is we're essentially invertible and we're happy to hit things spinning down, which means we can kind of just keep charging our opponent whereas other beaters and verts to take time to go like drive into the wall to stuff.

[A]

Right.

[C]

We can just immediately keep charging at our opponent, which I think is. Is definitely an advantage.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

Wow. So that's first of all horrifying. Thank you very much for telling me. I am now more afraid than before. Thank you. Second, going with that, that's sort of the philosophy of Kill Switch because we notice it's shuffler so it's already got extra weight. You have these massive first of all, very color coded, very nicely TPU blocks that protect the shufflers. But then this super thick beater bar with the goal of actually trying to destroy everything by spinning down too. Like a full body hammer sl. You can kind of think of just, you know, less. Less the arm throwing part. That's sort of the idea for Kill Switch. And like how is that innovation for it been? How's its growth?

[C]

It started out as kind of. I especially was pushing for with our team doing just interesting robots. Our first robot was a forward driver which I wasn't happy about. But really the only. The only shuffler I had seen during the initial development of Killswitch was a plant that didn't work very well. So I sort of saw the weight bonus list as a list of like a to do list of. Here's some interesting ideas to try out. And I ended up really happy with how this shuffler design worked out because it sort of just worked for his try mechanically at least. But yeah, the initial development was just kind of want to do something interesting. So let's try shuffler and then drum because we don't know how well our mobility is going to be. So we'd rather have just a wider surface area covered by weapon and then from there also think about mobility. As I was saying, we don't know if we're just thinking about maneuvering opponent, which means that spinning down would give us potentially an advantage going head to head because we can put that.

[F]

You mentioned the development because initially when we were designing the bot, the weapon motor was supposed to stick out the top and the top flavor could form around it. So that would mean that if we got flipped upside down, we couldn't do anything. So after a design review, I said, that's an obvious error in your design. You should fix that. We like compacted everything as much as possible into the bot and we managed to get it looking like what it was was now.

[G]

Yeah.

[D]

For its, for its weight and size and power. Because like comparing kill switch to UIUC's more modern wide verts, it looks like it's half the weight. Despite just being so unbelievably dense and powerful.

[C]

Yeah. Quack versus Kill Switch looks like the weight size

[A]

pretty bad.

[D]

We love building spinning robots.

[F]

Yeah.

[G]

I mean, like, one thing to note is that like throughout this entire fight, you know, like Red Star's like flipped a house spot and yet he's not able to flip Kill Switch like any, in any meaningful way. He's able to like pin and stick it, but like he's been. He's not able to actually lift it at all.

[A]

Yeah.

[G]

Lifting himself.

[C]

Living.

[G]

Lifting kills.

[A]

You're getting, you're getting killed a little bit. I mean, the, the places where it's getting stuck is like on the frame rail, which needs to change, but that's another topic.

[B]

And your, and your beater bar is so big and it's always spinning like the torque you have on it and the constant feed makes it impossible to get the center of mass on it. So it's really efficient that way because it's like your built in escape button in Kevin trying to pin you with Red Storm that you're constantly able to do stuff and you only can like shove you in the back. But like I said before, you can't really like do the nice grab and lift he likes to do. So you're actually like a very hard game in terms of pure control. And you can see like he's trying to adapt to that now with using the forks to sort of try to straight bounce you. But that's sort of a notice I've seen with Kill Switch in general. It's very like unrelenting. It's very mobile. First off, for A shuffler. But it's very unrelenting. And I think that's sort of been a big part of its ongoing success. Because. Is this still this, like the first, second version of Kill Switch? I don't think I've seen a lot of massive changes.

[C]

That's the first version of Kill Switch. We sort of had a man. We had Roborough just before this. And then we basically went unchanged going into June and Intra, which is where this was from row, other than changing up for cleats on the shufflers. And then since then, we've had like, sort of a version 1.5 where we upgraded some electronics, mainly because our weapon motor was a bit underpowered. We're getting, like. We're maxing out the esc, like, amperage reading. It was. It was not great. But now we're. Now we're on 8s and on a bigger weapon motor, but other than that. Yeah, this is essentially V1 here in this fight.

[D]

If I might bring something into this. UIUC were very, very good at building beater bars that just obliterate electronics and batteries. I think every single we built so far, we, like, pull the Mamba current logs and it's like the maximum current it can read is 351, and it's just go straight up above it and for, like. For, like, seconds at a time. And our. Our batteries are, like, going thermonuclear. So it's an ongoing struggle.

[A]

Who won this fight? Ultimate. I. Wow. Did you guys win this fight?

[C]

Redstone. Redstone won this by JD oh, wow. It was. Yeah, it was a very close fight. I think part of it, too, is again, because electronics, our weapon motor was. Our weapon ESC especially, was getting pushed too hard.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

In the last, like, 20 seconds, we lost weapon. Yeah, I think that.

[B]

Yeah, I'll do it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The damage, that is pretty killer. Naturel's rules. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But, yeah, this robot's still really, really impressive.

[G]

Oh, my gosh.

[A]

Look at the piece of rail that it ripped out.

[B]

Yeah. Dead.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Dead rise.

[D]

V Kill Switch in the soft spot.

[A]

Yeah. Wait, what happened? Oh, did he come down?

[B]

He bounced down on it. Yeah, he bounced down.

[C]

I bounced up and the vert hit directly on the top plate.

[A]

Oh, my gosh.

[C]

That was AR 500 top plate as well. That's an eighth inch of AR 500.

[B]

Real.

[A]

AR 500 or eBay AR 500. Because I've heard that there's a difference.

[B]

That's incredible.

[C]

There was.

[A]

It was.

[C]

I don't remember exactly, but it was it was something with the ESC where it was. I think it. Something happened in the ESC and then that fried the receiver because I think the capacitor was already broken.

[A]

Oh my gosh. And it just shuts off. Oh, that is so sad.

[B]

That is. I know you're pain. I know you're pain.

[A]

So insane.

[B]

That's really impressive though because.

[C]

Yeah, it was a really fun introduction of that too because that was the. That was the first on 8s. We didn't change anything about the drive other than the battery itself, which meant we were then running just directly from 6s to 8s drive, which meant it was noticeably faster. And the driver of Devon came up after us. Like, I fully wasn't expecting customers to come out of the box that quick. He was fully caught off guard by that, which is a part of how we were able to get that good old Joe.

[B]

Oh, interesting. So now you're fighting Gord in the Feb event. Gord's forks seem to be doing a fair job of trying to go against you, but you're also still getting licks in. Definitely lots of weapon. Weapon hits.

[F]

One thing we're quite proud about, Kill Switch is that it's a very tough nut to crack. It's a very durable frame. The frame is 3 quarter inch aluminum side rails.

[B]

We have issues.

[F]

Yeah, we haven't had many issues with damaging the armor or whatnot.

[C]

So yeah, I'm really happy with the armor too because we have. The other thing is, you can't see in this. This version is embedded in the TPU are uhmw plates half and W, which is. I mean, honestly, at 30s, TPU does something, but not much. But having having TPU as sort of a shock absorber behind UHMW

[A]

has worked really well.

[B]

So the H and W sort of like your stiffer element, you're thinking. And the tpu, if it's like low infill or low walls, allows it to move and that ability to both move by compression and then ultimately the TPU. The TPU H&W to resist the piercing, at least like do the stiff resistance. That combination has been working pretty well for you then. Yeah, I think we never tried to strike you through with like a, like a thin disc, like a emulsifier shot or even gourd, you know, like try to hit through.

[C]

This fight was really the one I was a little bit more worried about for the armor because up till that point we hadn't fought any like big birds. So I was. Oh yeah, okay. But Dead Race didn't Hit us. Because they hit our top

[B]

button.

[E]

Yeah.

[C]

Hit our side armor. So I was a little bit worried about it for this, but it works like, amazingly like the, it's. It was essentially just cosmetic damage on. We took a few hits at the back and a couple hits to the side and it, it worked great.

[A]

The, the weapons you guys have shown off are, are gorgeous. Where are you getting those? Are you guys making those in house? What are you doing? Because like the one on Undertaker is so cool.

[E]

Cool.

[A]

Let's see. The one on Kill Switch is so cool. And then the newer one. These are pretty cool. Where are you getting your beaters done, if you don't mind me asking?

[F]

So for Undertaker, I get them made. I outsource to China specifically Rapid Direct, because I, I just quote from a bunch of companies. I figured, okay, it's the cheapest one.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[G]

Also

[D]

ours ZTL was 50 cheaper, so it's ETL. Interesting. Whoever's cheapest in China.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. I didn't know if you guys were doing in house or you guys had. It had a supplier

[D]

for our weapons and they ended up being like a thousand five hundred dollars for a beater versus two hundred twenty from China. So.

[B]

Yeah, Yeah, I can argue with that.

[A]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[C]

We do most of the stuff in house, but the beaters are kind of. We don't have a machine.

[B]

Yeah, the weapon. Weapons are always a little crazy. That's kind of just how it's going to be.

[G]

It's.

[D]

It's still.

[A]

And like, especially like most colleges have a 3 axis, but machining on a beater on a 3 axis, like not super duper fun. I mean we. I've done it, but it's not the most fun thing ever. Just because you're, you know, you're limited on how tall you can make the part.

[D]

Right.

[B]

This is pretty, pretty good stuff. Pretty good stuff. So I guess a big question for all of you. Good, good.

[D]

That's right.

[B]

Nothing.

[D]

Professor. Wasp Match versus Kills, which is a very good one. But I digress.

[B]

I was gonna say. So looking at all these different machines between both legacy bots as well as the new crop of bots, if you could rank them one to, I don't know, one to whatever top.

[D]

I will.

[B]

I'll be nice and I'll say. What would you say the top maybe three are.

[G]

I'll go. I'll do mine really fast. Undertaker Roundhouse.

[D]

That's.

[B]

That, that's.

[G]

I, I feel like that's going to be in most people's Top three easily. It's dependent on like that. That's ranking to be decided. Roundhouse, for reference, is a 30 pound built by the Robo Gym people. I think it's won two different Robo Brawls. They come in, they beat the hell out of us, and then they leave. They take our, they take our beautifully made trophies. But yeah, Roundhouse is the one that's been scaled up to the 250 pound weight class. But yeah, I was wondering if it.

[D]

What do you guys think? That's my guess. I think just based purely off of results and history, I'll have to agree with him. I might actually swap out Goose with Kill Switch just based off of. I know Kill Switch's reliability and I think it can take that spot.

[E]

Neither of them were on that list.

[G]

I said Colossal Groundhouse and Undertaker. Yeah, I never said.

[F]

I still think Kill Switch can the Undertaker in a fight. Because the one thing I'm really envious about Kill Switch is that when they get flipped over, they're completely fine. All Jacob has to do is flip a switch on the controller and he's good to go. I, on the other hand, if I get flipped over, I'm like fluffing around like a fish running into walls.

[E]

I think, I think, yeah, based on results, it's kind of, I mean, I, I, based on results, Jason's ranking is correct. Undertaker and Colossal Avian are both top 10 right now. And Roundhouse has repeatedly destroyed everybody at Robo Brawl. But you know, I, you know, Goose did win a Robo Brawl one where Roundhouse was not there. Got my licks in and, but yeah, I, I mean, it's kind of hard, it's kind of hard to argue with the results that NHRL and stuff. But I do think all of our robots are quite competitive and have a sort of like rock, certain rock, paper, scissors aspect where like, yeah, Undertaker would like Goose be Kill Switch and Kill Switch would be Undertaker, but Undertaker would probably be Goose. And we're kind of getting to the point where, you know, we have good robots. You know, like any fight can go any way.

[D]

I think it's definitely more of these robots that have stuck around for longer, they've got more iteration on them and they can kind of just, you know, buff out all the weakness, the little things. So any robot that's been around for a long time just kind of naturally rises to the top. So I wouldn't discount any of our newer robots. Our current sophomores and freshmen are incredibly talented and I'm looking forward to what they produce and of course, their own robot showed glimmers of promise. Once those forks are spring loaded, I'm sorry, it's over for the entire.

[F]

You guys seen the fish at last comp. That was the 14 we, we like.

[E]

This fish is great.

[D]

That's a freshman robot right there.

[A]

Fish is your. Yeah, freshman robot.

[G]

I don't, I mean, yeah, right now

[D]

it was designed,

[B]

but yeah, this is also just massive.

[D]

Yeah, they're all based off of the kind of the same robot, they've got the same DNA in them. So yeah, there are a lot of similarities.

[A]

Yeah, man, that's it. That is a great robot. I like the fish.

[B]

Well, well, I would say for you guys, first of all, the future is looking bright. You have a nice legacy here. I think all these UI UC robots first of all destroyed me, so thanks a lot, boys. Second of all, second of all, even the BATA haven't fought. They're looking pretty good. I dread looking, looking for fights with them now. Kill switch. Sounds horrible, but overall, honestly, it just sounds like a very sweet, well run team. You have excellent event, excellent robots that come together and honestly, I think it's gonna be even more exciting, like you said before, bringing all these robots in the future as they get to further develop and see more of them kick into it. So wanted to thank you all for coming up on here in the pod, being able to go over not only the club stuff, but also the robot stuff. Between that and all of you guys and your excellent work. So thank you all for the wonderful chat.

[D]

Thank you so much for having us.

[E]

Thank you. This is great.

[A]

Thank you guys. Thanks for joining us in chat. Thank you to uiuc. You guys have a great rest of your night. Thank you. From behind the bots.