← Behind the Bots
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- [00:00]
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.
- [00:11]
B
And I'm Brandon.
- [00:12]
A
And today on our podcast, our interview with Zoe Lambert. She's back again hosting Hive Hysteria next weekend. You like our show, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Tunein, Castbox Player FM and Podcast Podbean. Go follow us on Instagram and Facebook at behind the Bots. Also, we'll be we're going to be on behind the Bots YouTube channel. We're going to be uploading all the stream vods and doing more in the future. And tell a friend we appreciate your support. Brandon, what's going on in June in the sport of combat robotics?
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B
I change it. It's July now, but.
- [00:48]
A
Oh, it's July. Oops.
- [00:50]
B
It's July. We did it, guys. We made it. But anyway, it's actually surprising. This month actually has less countries doing robot activity than you expect. But still lots of events going on this month. We have the us, the uk, Canada and Italy. So congrats to former British colonies, I guess. Except for Italy. But the biggest event this month coming up is actually Simo Brawl in the Mall at Quadcon. This is going to be on July 18th, where they're going to have over fifteen hundred dollars in cash and prizes. That's pretty good clean that. Like it's close to NHL money. Actually there will be 91 robots in the Beoway Antway and Plastic Antweight classes. Get details on this event and more at robot combat events.com builders db.com and bristolbotbuilders.com and now our interview with Zoe. Zoe, how you doing?
- [01:40]
C
I'm doing good. How are you guys?
- [01:43]
A
Good.
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B
Oh, personally, I'm hysterical. Oh yeah? Oh yeah. Pretty hysterical.
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C
I don't know if the audio will be better this year, but I know the fights will be awesome.
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A
So can we keep hits? Bass boosted? Can we keep that? Because some of the hits knock my
- [02:03]
B
socks off here, I don't think.
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C
Like I said, the audio situation is not changing. So if you really like loud, messy audio, you can have the audio turned on during our stream for the 12 pound cage.
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B
There you go, fans. There's your invitation.
- [02:24]
A
In the cage.
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C
The mic is dangling from the roof in the cage.
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B
I see. So by, by having the mic dangling there, is it also, would you say a target? So the robots aim for hitting the mic during a fight?
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C
Sure. I mean, it's, it's not too exposed, luckily, but it Is there? So if you hit the roof hard enough, I'm sure it'll. It'll do something to the bike.
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A
Be careful.
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B
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. So before I get too far into it, still wanted. At least I'm hoping to those who haven't heard the big excitement and one of the big reasons they wind up Zoe on is because Zoe's hosting a ton of events, namely Hive Hysteria. So Hive Hysteria, really cool event. Got some really cool announcements coming up from it as well. So, Zoe, tell us what's new with Hive Asteria, if not the audio.
- [03:22]
C
Well, so we have a few upgrades this year to our cage. The big cage in particular has no moat anymore, which to the disappointment of some, is a good improvement because it means that you can't win by just getting out of the arena on your opponent. Our little cage has giant, really tall kick plate. So if you get stuck on it, that's your own fault. I don't know how else I could prevent it at that point. Hive Hysteria. For this year, our winners in the 3 pound weight class and the 12 pound weight class get a wild card slot to the November NHRL Pro Tour.
- [04:01]
B
That's pretty. That's pretty big. So, I mean, I guess there's been a couple other maybe events across the country that have started doing it, but it's really unique hearing about sort of this building out of NHL, of this sort of like theater league or Bond league system. I know for other sports they have like sort of lower leagues they bring people up into. But it's kind of interesting seeing how they've been outreaching to sort of existing or more localized groups to do it. It's not like there's NHRL themselves who are going out and hosting lots of mini angel events. It's more like they're doing like pair partnerships, other teams. So how, how is that, like, how do you, how do you sort of get high as part of this, sort of this, this system feed into Pro Tour?
- [04:47]
C
A lot of meetings, really. It's. It's a lot of talking to people, making sure it's getting done right, making sure that we are doing everything safely, that we are being fair, that we're like. So one thing that we are part of now is the XP partnership. And a part of that is that they want people who are building new three pounders to have some experience before coming to nhrl. And that experience is mostly vital to making sure they don't forfeit. They know how an event runs. They can make it to their matches, and you can learn that not at nhra, you can learn that from any event. So there was a lot to make sure that when somebody comes to my event that I'm making sure they follow the same safety protocols as, like, NHRL and we're making sure they don't touch their weapon blade and those kinds of things. So that way when they go to an NHRL and they've earned their XP points at one of my events, that they are prepared and accurately, like, ready to go into, like, an open event.
- [06:00]
B
So has that been sort of what you say, part of the. So I mentioned before lots of meetings going into it, trying to make sure that. That your events are meeting like a, let's say an NHL bar, expertise and levels with that as well. This also isn't like your first Hive Hysteria or even other events like Aaron to Armor, which happen like last month, I believe, at other events. How has it been becoming more experienced as an event organizer? Like, how has it been growing up more and more events to go compete in? I know many people will enter the sport as competitors, as you, you know, have done as well before, but I think less people get into the event organizer headspace as well. So what was your journey like being like an event organizer saying, hey, I want to run events, not just compete at events.
- [06:53]
C
Truthfully, NHRL is very stressful, and I wanted a way to hang out with my friends while also doing something that we all love, which started me hosting events before I ever actually went to nhrl. I kind of liked the small Combat Robotics. So I held an event during COVID when our ofTC team and FRC team couldn't really compete as much. We did Combat Robotics to give them something to do and work through some, like, mechanical skills and. And so I hosted my first event because I wanted to do combat robots. And there was nobody around here really hosting what I wanted to do with my students during COVID And then it grew from that to where I was like, okay, let's have high hysteria. We had just gotten a big cage and we didn't have beetles the first year. It was just 12. And it is literally my birthday party. My birthday is July 30th, and I choose the weekend in July that is closest to my birthday. And I invite all my friends and we fight robots and maybe we'll have like, pizza or cake or something. I really started hosting events because I wanted to hang out with my friends. And the way to get them down here from Pennsylvania and New Jersey and wherever they are is to host events and get robots involved and so that really is what drove me to start hosting events. But then the more I hosted events, the more people who were like, hey, we love having events in Maryland. And I was like, oh, I should host more events, and they're fun. So then I kept finding, like, event space, and having event space means I can host more events. And so it just built itself up on its own. And it kind of feels like I blinked. And all of a sudden I have all these events and I don't know how they happened, but they just appeared.
- [09:00]
B
I love it personally, as. As someone who's been competing in Maryland for a long, long time. I remember in my youth it was always about going out to Motorama up in Pennsylvania or trying to go to Franklin Institute, Austin, PA. There's occasional events in Florida or Carolinas and obviously Massachusetts. And so Maryland, I was like, finally, there's more events happening in the state. Mainly bigger robots. I think the only other, like, big cages in the east coast for almost 20 years was like the Motorama cage. And then NHL showed up, and then now you have cage. So I'm loving it. But it's kind of. Kind of nice too, because I think that that spirit of I want my friends to come play is how you get cool stuff to happen. You know, like it. If it starts from like, I want to make money perspective, it's not going to end well. I want cool stuff to happen. It's going to be good.
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A
Yeah.
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C
I'd be very sad if I was going after money for these events. But one thing I'm really excited about and I'm hoping that we can start doing more in the future is right now High. Vistaria is the only event that we host with the big cage. And I would like, once we do our cage upgrade, where we can start having 12s and 30s fight in it. I would like to host more big bot events because I think that right now the main place for big bots is Motorama and nhrl. Motorama happens once a year and NHL is like, really hard to get into. It's pretty intense. So having some more like, local events and stuff that are not NHRL for 12s and 30s would be nice.
- [10:41]
B
Yeah, it's like pairing off of that a little bit too. So you mentioned at the beginning one of the big points about the XP program is you wanted to have robots get more established so we can see, NHRL having, you know, their goal, obviously, in working partnership with you. Less forfeits, more regular fights, faster repair times. Hopefully everyone just gets more refined. You know, the Goal is they don't want version 0 showing up at the event. They want like version 10 where it's fighting at its peak against other robots at their peak. Is the same vision, sort of what you're imagining for the big cage. We do more 12s and 30s. And is there any concern of perhaps running too many events where your robots, not robots, where the events almost begin to have difficulty sort of working with NHL schedule? I know that like right now they kind of front load the beginning of the year, like a summer break and then like a few handful events at the bottom of the year. Is there ever like a concern there about the like almost the competition for numbers, or are you not really worried about that kind of a thing?
- [11:42]
C
I'm pretty like. Luckily, NHRL does often put their schedule out early in the year, and the past couple of years they've always done it like the first week of the month. So I try to pick a midweek. So that way I have a weekend and a weekend before and after an nhrl. I would love to be in the situation where I could host an event like once a month, even if it's just a small, like, ant event or plant or beetle. Maybe not as intense as some of my other events where I do beetles and plants, or like Hive Hysteria where I do threes and twelves, but just anything really. But yes, as it develops, I'm keeping an eye on the schedule. I don't want to burn myself out because the last thing I want to do is build up this big community around it and then not be able to continue because I'm burnt out.
- [12:37]
B
Yeah, that. That kind of flows pretty seamlessly into the next thing I was going to bring up with being a competitor and an event organizer. I imagine burnout can come out because Jake and I are doing like a roughly once a month podcast and we're still like, oh, sorry, next month again, we have to plan new interviews. And that's why, like, you know, a Thursday afternoon, Thursday evening, and then we're doing all the robot stuff outside of it. But you have the whole honeycrack team that you're managing these relationships, which we'll probably, you know, ask more about that later. Getting all the event venues building up and stuff. And then of course just running really cool robots like Mayan and Plusl. Fantastic. First of all, like the simply the appearance of them at the last event. Loved it. Probably one of the most beautiful robots I've ever seen, like decorations and such on it. They also have your teams robots. And then if you Ever want to make more robots yourself? You know, those also come up too. So I guess that's part of it with the event balance there. But how do you want to balance those things out or how do you would hope to balance those things out?
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C
I don't currently because I enjoy what I do. So I, I host events and that's not too bad, especially when I'm doing plants and beetles because that cage is pretty easy to put up. I just have to work with the venue and we can set that up so it's not too bad. Hi. Fosteria is the big one. That kind of takes a lot of energy. As far as my team, I have a lot of really valuable members to my team who can help those who need it. So it's not just me helping the team become strong. Liam's there, Cody's there, Stack's there, Joe's there. And everybody helps support building up the other members of our team. So it's not just like on me to do that. So if I'm ever too busy to help, I can always jump in or ask one of them to jump in and help. I also mentor our ant weight program or plant program. So we have about 20 students in that program. They meet on Tuesdays and Sundays come in, they're building plant kits and then they get to fight them. Depending on what they want to do. They get to improve them and stuff. So I'm here for that. That gets a little overwhelming, but not too bad. Like I said, I enjoy teaching people about new things and build my own robot when I have time. If I'm not doing any of those things, then I have time to build my robot.
- [15:05]
B
You know, it's, it's a well oriented life. It's dedicated to the goal. Got so many different avenues to do it in. And you're enjoying it. I'm a big fan of that. I think that's overall one of the, you know, one of the coolest things I ever heard. It's pretty awesome.
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C
Hold on just a second. I am in a live interview right now. That way. Sorry, I'm in the conference room. So it has all our it stuff, like our Internet stuff in it. Sorry.
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B
It's all right.
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A
You're almost legendary for growing this. Not almost. You are legendary for building this program. When you see new builders at these kind of what are becoming satellite competitions for nhrl, you know, they're trying to get these new builders involved. What is the most important thing for those new builders to do to see
- [16:07]
B
at their first event?
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C
I think that it's pretty important for them to fail at their first event, because if you have. I know it's really awesome to, like, win all the time, but you don't learn anything from winning really, other than that you won. And the most that you can learn from your robot is by having a non successful match or something like that. So if you go to an event that is too easy for you and you just win the first time, then you're not learning very much. Whereas you take that and then you go to nhrl. There's not. NHRA is not an easy event. So if you only had one easy event, you never failed, then that would really become like, you would not be set up correctly for nhrl. And so I think that's really important. I also think learning to push through when you're very frustrated because you will fail and that happens. And you have to know how to repair your robot. And that's a big part of this sport, is knowing how to go from one match to the next when you're destroyed without getting super frustrated. Because you don't have time to be frustrated in between matches.
- [17:12]
B
No, it's good. These are great lessons. Zoe, thank you very much. And for now, we're gonna. We're gonna head to a quick break. When we come back, we're gonna keep talking about some of the events, the team of Honeycracked, and some your questions. See y' all pretty soon.
- [18:00]
A
And we are back with Zoe Lambert, the head of the Hysteria. Excited to have you on. So in having these conversations with both NHRL and other events locally, what does building those relationships look like? What do those conversations look like in terms of getting your safety up to spec? What does Kelly want you to do?
- [18:27]
C
I mostly actually talk to Casper and he's been really awesome. It's not really that they're worried about anything. They just want to make sure. And then they also. I believe they do this with other XP partners because there are others is making sure that we're all happy with the decisions that are being made and that we're all agree with how XP should work at these events and everything. So that's mostly what those meetings have been about. Our other events, like the ones at the fair and at the air show, it's been a lot of just working with the people who are in charge of those to make sure that we have space. I think a lot of the time when we first do these things, they actually don't know what's going on. They think that we're just doing robotics Demos. And then by the time we get there and I explain, like, oh, yeah, they're actually like fighting robots. And that's why we have like 30 people here. They're like, oh, okay. And then they get really excited about it afterwards. Like, so the fair people, last year, we actually brought them to our shop, showed them plants fighting, showed them hitting stuff, showed the robots in the cages before we had the fair event, and they were like, oh, this is much cooler than we thought it was. Like, they were excited about it already, but they like, yeah, after seeing it, they were like, okay. And most of these opportunities actually come up because Growing Stems is a nonprofit and we have other robotics programs. So we normally do robot demos for events like the fair or the STEM festival or whatever. And then I just say, hey, can I host a combat event here? And sometimes I get yes, and I don't think I've ever gotten a node yet.
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A
That's pretty cool.
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B
Would you actually say that angle of going sort of having the educational foot in the door and then leveraging the combat? You say it's been the case for all the different venues that you've been able to compete at before?
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C
Every single one, except for the Water's Edge 1, the Discovery center at Water's Edge. One of their volunteers actually reached out because he's in the combat community, and he helped organize it. We got together, we figured out what would be best for both organizations. And so that was one where they already kind of had some knowledge of combat robotics, and they specifically wanted that at their Science center or their Discovery Center.
- [21:07]
B
So that's going back to the XP and Pro Tour programs that's being set up there. Is there, like, any sort of limitation? Are there any, like, certain rule sets that you have to buy into? I know the Spark rule sets, very common, that's sort of been used. NHRL has their own rule set. Of course. Frequently, what we see across the country and really the world is a lot of events have like, their own tiny rule sets. Very famously, there's some events that plants versus all PLA plus plants. There are some events that will have like 2 minute fights or 3 minute fights or so on. Like that. Like, was that something that gets discussed heavily or that something that everyone's had to worry about much or even judging or stuff like that? Or is it more free
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C
at first? When they first introduced the XP Partnership to us, it was. They were trying to figure out what they wanted to do and whether it was going to be more like, okay, you have to follow NHRL's bracket style or you have to follow like these specific rules. But then after having discussions they kind of realize that's not the point of XP and that the point is to get people prepared and going to really any event that requires them to be at a match at a certain time or to get prepared in between fights. And that's what prepares people for competition. Not necessarily like the judging style or the the competition bracket, but just the fact that they have to get their robot ready. They have to fight and actually like get that far. So you have to get like top six at one of my events, I think it was the Air and Armor event and Hive Hysteria to be able to go straight into open at an NHRL event. And it's actually kind of hard even if we have a small bracket because I invite all of my friends who are like team defective and yeah. And honeycracked and so they're all pretty good.
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A
It's hard because Liam and Zach are still there. Yeah. Like
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B
jumping on with that. Maryland has through these events and others a lot of certainly with these become a hot set of very powerful teams. Like you have your team of course like you said before, like effective also comes down and does stuff Leatherbacks and steadily growing in the past two years. So like most events have like these three groups at least which we're all.
- [23:44]
C
And you always have Lars. Lars is always competing. Lars is like he is the powerhouse. So.
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B
Oh yeah. Cannot forget he's. It's kind of funny like if there I know that we enter for like the farm league system in the same way there's like a recruiting. It's like a deep one recruit for other facts. Like there's, there's. It's too easy. If you would ask Leatherbacks like what do you want the future to be? We want ours to come here too. And so it's funny seeing those events he's you know, been handily fighting against them sometimes winning, losing. But either way it's sharp, it's iron sharpening iron. And so especially because of those robots like ours, we've seen a lot of these kind of robots go out to nhrls like be pretty serious. It's really cool seeing that.
- [24:39]
C
Yeah. And it forces everybody who is maybe not on that level yet. And if they're at these competitions that I'm hosting and they're constantly fighting these really hard bots in a 16 bot bracket, then it kind of forces them to get better quicker. They want to be competitive with these people. They see all these other robot designs and get Inspiration and they get to talk to people who have all this experience and are winning these events. So it gets them really exposed to that and then they can level up very quickly because they have more resources available to them
- [25:18]
B
100%. So while we're talking about Hive Hysteria especially, that's the one that's coming up July 25th. Matt. Great fan, Matt. He asks, are there any specific fights that you want to see happen at Hive as area? They're all.
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C
There's a lot of really strong bots. We were going through the list last night because I was trying to make see how many people were like new versus experienced robots. And they're all very experienced. Last year there was a lot of talk of people breaking my cage and that they might break the cage. And I think that could happen this year. I'm prepared with extra polycarb just in case. The walls are really high. So hopefully that doesn't happen. But I don't know if there's a particular one I'm ready to see or like I'm looking forward to see. I'm excited to see Reaper fight. So Colin drove Reaper and Honey Bombers at the June NHRL with me and Reapers the horizontal and he was doing amazing. That's the first 12 that he's actually like operated other than like a mini bot and he was killing it. And so now for High Hysteria he has made a full weight Reaper that he's going to be competing with. So I'm very excited to see how that goes for him.
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A
But
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C
I think classics anybody like, I know Team Defective goes against Team Defective quite often and those are usually pretty good. Skywalker is a new robot from alex in the 12 pound weight class. So I'm excited to see how that goes for him. But without like I can't pair any two robots together without like they. I'm excited to see all the fight. So it's really hard to like be like, oh, I want to see this robot fight this robot. But I'm mostly like, I have particular robots that I'm excited for. Then fights actually good. There's a multibot. I was going to do mining and plusle but I have to run the event and I realized that was going to be too much. But Dumb and Dumber is at this event because we have. We allow NHL legal multi bots, which I think is a first for our 12lb weight class for hi stereo. So that I'm pretty excited to see that.
- [28:05]
B
That's pretty good. Actually. You kind of already brought it up sort of on digging a Little more on it. Like HAB is a bit unique in your practice build. If not mistaken, you saw like the ANTI system that you still use at hav.
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C
Yeah, yeah. We use the token. So everybody starts the day with three tokens and then you pick who you're going to fight. You come up and you tell us and then we send you to a cage. Last year there was a couple of people who were very intimidating, so they didn't get to fight very many because people didn't want to fight them. So now we are adding your first fight of the day is randomly selected for you. You get randomly paired up with somebody to fight. So that way everybody gets their first fight of the day. They don't have to worry about the social anxiety as much to go and find their fight for the first one. And it makes sure everybody gets at least that one fight in.
- [29:01]
B
It's very. Because remind me if I'm wrong. Pretty sure the way it was. You can't like, you can't super gamble like if you start out today, I don't know, like two tokens. You can't like get all two tokens on the first fight. It's like one for one, right?
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C
Yes, it's. I guarantee it's always one per one. Especially because we track it internally. We track all our fights. We have spreadsheets and everything that calculate how much tokens you're supposed to have. Every cage has a computer that the match info gets entered on. So if people, if I allowed that and then somebody's like, oh, this time actually you get two tokens or whatever, then we might not be able to keep track of that as well. That's mostly why it's like that. But I also don't want somebody doing one fight and then losing all their tokens and not able to fight for the rest of the day. That doesn't sound very fun.
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B
Well, it could be a fun but like a different kind of damn boy. Certainly like a specific wow. Ideal for this. Yeah, pretty much.
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A
I'm all in.
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B
So I guess actually with that, what inspired the token system and how does it.
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A
Sort of.
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B
Sort of. And how does it work itself out over the course of the event? Does it still work itself into the bracket? Is there a limit to fights so on like that.
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C
I'm sorry, can you re. Can you repeat that? What are you asking?
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B
So I was asking what inspired the token system and then how does it work itself out over the event? Like I understand that you like use a token to get a fight, but is there like A number of fights until you clear it off, go into bracket, stuff like that.
- [30:52]
C
So what inspired it is, again, I just wanted my friends to come down and hang out. And a lot of the times that means preparing for an nhrl. Like, there's something that we need to work out in our robot. And running a bracket is super formal, and if you have to repair your robot or you're not quite ready to do that, then that can make other people miss their fights. And that's not very fun. So when everybody's just kind of testing and wants to know what's going on, the token system allows you to. You could fight once and then work on your robot the rest of the day, or you could fight as many times as you want. And so it lets you decide what you're ready for and compete like that. And that way nobody is like, losing a fight because somebody has to forfeit and nobody's being forced into a fight. But we are cutting it off around 3pm we then take the top four from each bracket or from each weight class and we put them into a bracket to find the which ones are the number one and then go down from there. Sometimes there's ties. We actually use the number of matches that you've had as the tiebreaker. So again, all this we have, like right now, it's spreadsheets. Eventually, I would like to make it a little bit better than that, but it's all automated. All you do is you say who you put the match in, you say who won the match, and then it figures out, like, what everybody's rank is, what, like how many tokens they have and like how they're doing and everything. So that way it's really easy for us to just take the those top four and put them into a bracket.
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B
Interesting. Like, you could have a case where you have someone who's bought, let's say nine fights, they win six, lose three, they get sick, versus someone who's had six fights, they won all six. Like, in that case, they're, you know, technically equal in wins, but because the assumption is that this guy fought more is the idea that you gain sort of more experience. So it's part of that XP goal of encouraging more experience in it.
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C
Yeah, it's to encourage more fights. If you want to win, we want you fighting. Because there is a way to break the system where you could be one of the top people just by not fighting at all. So, like, if everybody does pretty poorly and you start the day with three tokens, you don't fight at all. Then you end up with three tokens and other people are down to like one or two. So you could end up in like second or third place by not fighting at all. And I don't want that. I do want to encourage people to fight and I want the people who win to really earn it.
- [33:48]
B
I like it. It builds that, that experience mentality. I love it. Part of why I'm afraid of it, because others afraid of it too, because it could like, it could lead to like such a brilliant berserker energy where you're like, I'm just gonna do all the things. I'm just gonna throw everything I have at it and just have an excellent day. Or it could lead to like, I imagine like you're saying before, but it's designed to discourage it. Like a fearful attitude of like, oh, I don't want to fight from Hedda four times today, even though he's the most available robot. But I try to encourage you to be like, okay, maybe you can learn something.
- [34:27]
C
Yeah, I, I am being a little bit more restrictive this year. I think last year we were a little too nice where when somebody couldn't find somebody to fight, we put them on a list and then we'd say, oh, so and so is on the list. Do you want to fight them? And then they could say, no, I don't want to fight them. And then they just went on the list. So the people who were on the list who either couldn't get fights or people didn't want to fight them, they never got to fight. Whereas this year what we're doing is if you go on that list, you're paired with the next person who goes onto the list. You're not. You don't. There's no picking.
- [35:01]
B
Oh, you could get some incidental bangers just because of who's there.
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C
Yeah, it's. If you can't come up with a fight, then we're going to give you one. And it's. I think that's only fair. And it means that there's not just some people just waiting on the wait list for forever waiting for a fight
- [35:23]
B
keeps the day moving to more fights happen.
- [35:27]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
- [35:32]
B
Good. So part of, I guess going off with the other beer question maker asks is there is entering NHRL's XP program make you want to run even more events than you usually do in a year? Like, is there sort of incentive to do more events?
- [35:56]
C
I am always looking for more places to do more events because I love hosting them. The XP partnership is a benefit but it's not a driver. It's. I was already hosting events so that's why we are XP partners. But I will always try to build up my events and I'm trying to build up the amount moving forward in the most practical and non burnout way possible. I really hope that like I said, I want to host like one event a month if I could. Right now where I'm at, I can't really do that during the winter time. But if I find venues to be able to do stuff then I'll run events.
- [36:51]
B
I guess with that what has been of that, that preparation process for event running Fin because I know like mentioned before last year with the addition of a 3lb cage you're able to explain hyper like a 12lb only event, the big cage like a 12 and threes and to do things like air and armor, barnyard brawl like that. What other stuff have you had to kind of work out the details of just by virtue of being an event organizer especially fun looking for more and more events to do
- [37:23]
C
one making sure that event registration costs are not too much, but they're enough to cover any maintenance to the cage. We are making sure like this year the bumpers are different in the 3 pound cage and the 12 pound cage because people didn't like the bumpers that we had or they didn't like the moat or they really like the moat. But a lot of people don't like the moat.
- [37:43]
A
Bob really likes the moat.
- [37:49]
C
And so it's about making sure that my cage stays maintained, stays practical and is not making people super frustrated with it. Because that's the last thing I want to do. I don't want people to be frustrated at one of my events. So taking everything that we're doing at our events that happened in the past, learning from them and improving them for the future is like a lot of the learning and the work that goes into it. Because there's not been one event so far where I felt like I could go into the next event without changing anything. We have our timer systems that we are improving. We actually just bought one timer system for both the big cage and the little cage from somebody in the nhrail discord who has been working on them. And I think there's actually lots of organizations that have bought timers from him and they're really cool and it's a great platform for us to build off of and we definitely plan on doing that. I am adding better light to the three pound cage. So that way when we're outside and it's really sunny. You can see inside the cage a little bit better because it's brighter in there. I'm hoping I can add to the lights that they actually react so, like, when you tap out, they turn red and when you ready up, they turn green and like making the cages better in that way. So there's just a lot of things to make it. Like we've been to NHRL and we see what the lights can do. We see like what production can be. And we would love to at least get the builder feeling like it's very consistent and that they're not losing because of something with the arena or something with the lights. So I strive to make it better. And so that's where most of the work comes in, is maintenance and improving.
- [39:47]
B
I like, like the idea of, like, creating parity between events as much as possible because I remember when all. When I guess everyone here first like went to Naturel and saw the production stuff like, oh, this is like closer to a TV set because you have like the interviews, you have lots of the reactive lights. You have like a safety area where you go down and stuff like that to make it feel like more of a production. But an HRL is kind of like a unicorn, you know, it's not supposed to be like how every single event is. And I'm sure for many people it's kind of probably a little bit jarring or your first introduction to this little sport, especially like a Beetle eight robots kind of. And it feels like you're being shoved on television. Especially compared to like, other events perhaps that may come up, like the local events, like we were saying before, where it's like much more normalized but still, like, want to maintain level of competition. But even so, NHRL is still pretty unique. And probably one of the more unique things about it is the more recent announcement about the September pro league event coming up. September 12th, I think something like that. Second weekend in September. That sounds right.
- [41:03]
A
Yeah. September 12th.
- [41:04]
B
Sure.
- [41:05]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. September 12th.
- [41:08]
A
Yeah. Very good.
- [41:09]
B
And that's in New York, Terminal 5 in New York City. You two are going. I'm not going. You two are pros and I'm just. I'm just here. But what do you. What do you think about that? That goes for both of you.
- [41:24]
A
What do you.
- [41:25]
B
What are you thinking about the. The out the. Is it non Norwalk, NHRL coming up?
- [41:34]
C
Right now I'm very nervous about travel, but I'm also very excited about the, like, expansion and it being in a new location because I don't I pass through New York when I go to nhra, but I've never actually been to New York and the venue looks cool. So I think it's going to be a lot of fun. We have Honey Bombers from Honeycracked going. I know Liam's taking Buzzkill and Joe is going with Dead Rise. So having our little group going is nice. Our team has three robots, I guess and, or I guess Buzzkill's probably with leatherbacks, but either way I still, I like to consider them but on both teams. So it's going to be a fun experience. I like I said, I am worried a little bit about the logistics of it, but overall it's really cool. This is Collins. Like I said, Colin, this was his first 12 that he was driving. He has been helping Liam develop it. It's mostly a Liam design, but Colin has been heavily involved in all the improvements and stuff that are happening with it. And so for him at June, for us, I guess, because I was also involved, but I feel emotionally I'm excited for him. We got fourth place, so we got our bid to champs and then we also got in a pro tour. So I think that shows a lot for him and his skills by being able to pick up this robot and drive it and really we work together to get that far. So I think that's exciting and I'm happy to celebrate that in itself by going to the pro tour event.
- [43:28]
A
I think everyone's got the same answer that they're nervous about the logistics. I think that was everyone's first thing that they were nervous about. And then like, it'll, you know, it'll probably be okay. I mean, as far as like loading and unloading, I'm excited. I've been working on a pet project with Ben Hoss over the summer, which is this little guy, which is a driver assistance board. And kind of thinking about like how I'm going to. How I'm going to implement this, I was like, you know, it's going to be kind of hard to test and tune that on. NHR's got the big cages downstairs and they have the medium cage upstairs. But the medium cage is always just like destroyed. And like the idea that I would have to like test and tune it on that floor and then go downstairs to the floor downstairs on, on Saturday was a little nerve wracking. So when they said they're like, okay, we're going to do September, I'm like, okay, what's the test cage situation? And I'm not sure, but I talked To Casper, he's like, okay, we'll use the big cage as the safety cage on Friday. I'm like, that makes sense. And that's uniquely good for my situation because it'll allow me. So it's just like, I'm just like, the stars are like, aligning as far as, like, like my situation. I'm like, I will never get a better chance than this to, like, make this perfect. So I'm very excited about this that I've kind of accidentally happened onto the perfect set of circumstances to debut this stuff that we've been working on.
- [45:11]
C
Are you worried about degradation of the floor over the event?
- [45:15]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks. Yes.
- [45:19]
B
Aren't you famously good at destroying this for yourself? Actually, whenever you gyro pretty hard, Max?
- [45:25]
A
Yes, I'm worried about if it's a possibility. I am worried about it. But we'll see how much the, like, the pid loop can handle. Like if the tuning is good at bad floor and if the tuning is good at good floor, like, I don't know what the difference is, you know, like, is it, you know, because, like, obviously, like, there's an ideal set of PID values for when it's. The floor is perfect. There's an ideal set of PID values for when it's torn up. But, you know, what's the range at which both of those operate and like, do those overlap? So I'll tune it. I'll tune it here at the house. I've got a floor downstairs that's like pretty destroyed and I'll tune it on that and then I'll take it and see how it works on the floor that's fixed and if it works good enough and then we'll do that. I don't know. On my hardwood floor without cleats, it was pretty similar to my test floor with cleats.
- [46:32]
C
So you need a potentiometer on your controller where one side is clean floor and one side is messed up floor. And slowly throughout the day, you just scroll that to get tune the settings.
- [46:48]
A
I've thought about how fun it would be to have a P, I and D potentiometer on my controller so that I can like, adjust it.
- [46:56]
B
Actually, that's a. That's a.
- [46:59]
A
You know what I could do? I could have the control signal also serve as a tuning signal or one of the variables. Let me think about that.
- [47:14]
B
What I'm hearing is thinking of how
- [47:15]
A
to improve it in real time. The gears are turning. I had a conversation with Zoe
- [47:25]
B
because
- [47:25]
A
right now I've got a pass through to go back to normal mode. And if that's low, then it passes through. But if it's high, then it's normal. But I could use that as a tuner as well because then I could just have that once it flips up that way. I'm not like adding a weird channel
- [47:52]
C
now is that like maybe do an event first, see if you need it.
- [47:56]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [48:00]
B
Actually I'm about to ask you with that, Jake. That's something that you're saying is unique for maximizers or something that you were thinking of like expanding on for other ideas. Because I think interact Combat, the idea of like driving well is underrated, first of all. And second of all, I think most people's only experiences as far as like, like trim on the controller and call it a day. You're kind of right. A little more on that.
- [48:27]
A
Yeah. So. So Ben and I have been developing this. We've gotten a ton of help from Cody at. Because all roads lead to Cody at some point. Point, I feel as far if it's like electronics related. And then actually Aaron Fan has been a big help recently too because he did something similar on John Undercutter. It's kind of. It's. It's cool that we've got the summer break because it allows everybody to like bite off a very big project for like three months and not like that's all that they work on. And it's interesting. So, so Grim Ripper's got one, now there's someone else with one. And then we've got ours. So there's at least four systems that are kind of getting rolled out this fall, which should be interesting to see how those like converge and diverge in like how they operate.
- [49:31]
C
And are they all horizontals?
- [49:34]
A
No robocats.
- [49:37]
C
Okay.
- [49:37]
A
Because we're going to put Robocat too. We're going to put the same one in Max and Robocat. So what I'm interested in is how robocat, like how much gyro do we want it to cancel versus how much do we does the gyro feel like kind of natural, but I don't know. I'm not a vert driver. So we'll just have to like tune it and like find out. You know what I mean? And like that's the fun part is like, because we don't have a test cage here in Cincinnati. So it's just like make it as dynamic as possible. And that's why I kind of like the idea of the potentiometer.
- [50:17]
B
Then you could change it on My supply. Interesting idea. But thinking about that, and I think that's one of the biggest parts of so many spinners is they have to keep counting the gyro. Some do it mechanically the Gatron where you have two counter spinning weapons. But could you imagine how deadly a world where, I don't know, Xenomorph doesn't have the gyro anymore. It just straight up just pivots on the die and can hit you. Please.
- [50:45]
A
No. Please. Already so scary.
- [50:53]
B
Ready for that world.
- [50:55]
A
So. So I'm excited for new robots. Yeah, right.
- [51:00]
C
Oh and then plus are complete. They're completely different now.
- [51:06]
B
I was gonna ask about that actually. Like in your stuff, Zoe, you've now had, I mean obviously doing the events like Hydrans but you also had your time off. Any sort of big stuff that you're working towards as far as robot design. In this case mine plusl yeah, mining
- [51:22]
C
and plusl I got the approval. So they are still tank tread because I really love the tank tread. But they are beater bar. Now I get the parts for them in next week and I've been. I have a makeshift one that I made to make sure that I actually liked driving that style of robot because it does drive very different than the current mining and plusle. I'm also very sad to have not the hub motor anymore because that means I have a belt for my weapon that can fall off or fail. So not super happy about that. But I'm very excited about the beater bar so sacrifices so that way I can have the weapon style that I like.
- [52:08]
B
Do you think the beater bar is going to lend itself really, really well to the multi bot form factor? The beater obviously did well the beetle weights but how are you imagining it for the 12 pounders?
- [52:21]
C
I imagine that Matt's going to drive it way better because he drives cheese and blue cheese is a beater bar and he can kind of just hit stuff with it. And so I think he's going to go crazy with that robot and have a lot of fun. For me I was struggling a lot with the tiny weapon profile, like how skinny it is. So you have to aim it pretty well to be able to hit what you want. And the structure since it has like multiple upright pieces, you have the weapon upright, you have the side rails. Trying to fit that into eight pounds just was becoming more and more difficult as I wanted to improve things. I wanted to have it aluminum because I wanted to have it strong but I wanted to have a big weapon because I liked when I took off Buzzkill's weapon. So like all those mean that I wanted to build a 12 pounder, like that's not realistically going to fit into an 8 pounder, but the beater bars give you a wide area to hit with. They have the two side rails, they have a mid rail and a back rail and it's a lot simpler. I'm actually testing out some of my specialty B box badass motors for the drive and for the weapon. So that will be really good test of both those systems. So all around just this, this update to mining and plusl. I love vert mining and plusl. I wish I didn't have to move away from it for like my style. But I think the beater bars are going to be a really nice improvement and I'm gonna enjoy that just as much once I drive it around for a little bit more.
- [54:02]
B
Okay. So personally I'm horrified hearing that, you know, building a new 12. First thing I agreed with is two big beer bars, two cheeses if you will. You know, drama, that's trauma. I'm not coming back for sure. But also glad to hear it too. I'm guessing that like with it you're also expecting a lot of ability to kind of kill things relatively fast. Because I love Mayan and puzzle not only because they look excellent but also because they're probably one of the few like consistently demonstratingly strong multi bot different than bomb farmers like variations. But in your case it sort of leans into your previous other conversations like multi bots have. I just think advantage being two against one. And so with the beater bar having so much power concentrate in it now you're sort of like leaning into that ability now because now both of them, or either one of them I should say probably has as much potential power as full scale 12 pounder just smart body around it. So I think that could lead to very interesting competitor.
- [55:15]
C
Yeah, one of the hardest parts with the multibots is that you do way less. So if you don't get the right like approach on your opponent then you kind of all the power goes into sending you flying instead of you actually like sending them flying. So it's very important that your robot structure when you're doing multi bots is something that can take advantage of having two robots and can get those optimal hits and the beater bars are just going to make it easier to do that. And it's also like I also get bored. So I work through so much on mining and plusl. Like I think I've improved every bit of it that I Could like starting with the hub motor, developing that and getting that to a point where I just like, it's just reliable. Like, I don't have to worry about it at all to like, how am I optimizing how much weight I take out of the drive rails. And they'll still work even after a huge chunk is taken out of them. And so I've optimized the hell out of that. Sorry. I've optimized that like crazy. And it. I think I'm done. Like, I think that I've reached what I wanted with that. It's also, I'm not satisfied with where I got. I need more weight to do what I want. And I now can start developing again with the new mining and PlusL and I can start utilizing the weight in a different way because of the different structure.
- [56:49]
B
You think there's still places for the hub motors? Because they're, you know, at the very least, I think packaged so tightly. So that part's pretty cool. But I wonder if you still have like, addition of where they could go or at least be applied if you got to be.
- [57:06]
C
I don't plan to stop using the hub motors. I spent so long coming up with these custom hub motors. They're super reliable now, like Void uses them. They're still used in the vert for Honey Bombers. We use the big version in B Force. I love hub motors. I am so excited. Or I'm. I don't want to say excited, but I'm very proud of what I've built and I don't want to leave that behind. And I know if I stop using them, I'll forget all my like, knowledge that I've built around them. So I gotta use them in some sort of robot
- [57:47]
B
and make a blog. I don't care.
- [57:50]
C
Yeah, I love it.
- [57:51]
A
I love that.
- [57:52]
B
I love information sharing.
- [57:55]
A
It's always funny when you, like, design something and then you walk away from it and then like months later you look at it and you're like, I designed this. Like, I forgot everything about it. Like, oh, no,
- [58:09]
B
it's. It's such a crazy deja. I think it's gonna just like constantly wanna, you know, putting more stuff into it. They're going different directions with divine ideologies. They're just like the brain's like a cup spilling over. Acknowledge. Okay. Later on.
- [58:29]
C
Definitely.
- [58:31]
B
Another thing you kind of alluded to earlier is all the hive tech stuff developing you mentioned, you know, in our first episode. Look at that. Or the bottom YouTube channel. But we have like Beebox some Pretty cool. The bespokes pretty solid. The hive drive pretty closely related to it. Well, there's stuff we've been marketing for them.
- [58:56]
C
So in a few weeks I'll get some more parts in that have been in testing. So I have some new hex hubs coming out for drive for half inch hex, 38 hex for the hive drive and the B box and whatever gearbox you have that has a half inch hex or 3,8 hex. We have 30 pound B spokes now which are half inch round instead of 3 8. So those are going to be going. They've been in the new version of B Force. Brandon, you've tested a few of them for me. So those are going to get added to the website soon. And then we're also adding hooves to the website. So you may have seen them on Mynan Plus. So my Nanomplus will utilize aluminum hooves for their forks. And Liam has been using some different ones on Buzzkill. He's recently developed a newer one that was like wide and flat and B Force has been utilizing the same ones that my plusl have, but they're steel instead of aluminum, like hardened steel. So all those are going to be added to the website soon. And we've been testing them a lot. I really make sure that we test all our products and like put them into a lot of different conditions before I sell them. And I don't sell them unless I'm like very happy with it.
- [60:25]
B
So I guess along with it, besides being very cool and takes to be down showing some of that stuff on the website right now. Check it out@livingtimes.org the Combat Categorical Store. What sort of inspires the creation of. Not sure if we had that even in the other conversation, but like what generated the design of the. The new nuts, the new hexes, as well as even hoofs. Especially the hoof. Yeah. What inspired.
- [60:59]
C
So we have a big team and robots are expensive. The more you buy of a part, the cheaper it becomes when you get it manufactured or whatever you want to do. And with us being a nonprofit organization, we do have like fees to be on our team, but I try to keep that as low as possible and make it to where people can still build the robots that they want to build. Which means that if we buy a whole bunch, the team gets cheaper parts and then we sell them on the website. So anything that is on the website is things that our team uses for all of our robots that we need and that we've tested. So like the bespokes and the hooves and everything are things that Liam designed that the team wanted to use. So like B Force used to be shoulder bolts instead of the bespokes. And once we had the bespokes, it improved all of our robots. And now the community has access to them as well. Because not everybody has access to order parts from China to get these sorts of things. So it's all about like helping our team be able to afford things better. And I try not to charge too much for the pieces. It's just enough to like cover them really. So that way it's more accessible to the community as well.
- [62:21]
B
Fantastic.
- [62:22]
A
I love it. Are my favorite. They really good.
- [62:27]
C
Good.
- [62:29]
B
You know, I guess when I think about this before, but because you have some of the most consistent 12 and 30 pound parts that you could find. Because a lot of the parts, it's important to know just in general, among all the robot manufacturers, generally the insects get the most because they're the biggest classes £1 and £3, but because you have more of 30 pound and 12 pound parts with the gearbox and other such things, and then you also have this area, you create a very beautiful situation. Like I have bee boxes. I'm break because like some monster I could get to be like, hey, Zoe, you have any more?
- [63:08]
A
Any more?
- [63:10]
B
You're like, sure. And then it's just like a fast. It reminds me like a hobby shop. You know, local hobby shops who have tracks in them, they sell the store. So you walk in there, you're like, that's cool. And they're like, cool. They sell you the car, you drive it, break it. They're like, cool. Here's the upgrade parts right alongside it. Like a nice little thing for it. Not sure that's like a tactical play that you had, but it worked out pretty well where you had like those two things converging towards that kind of thing.
- [63:40]
C
The only money benefit that I was thinking of when doing this was that my team doesn't have to like pay for as much parts. I think if I wanted to, I could charge more for my parts than I do except for the gearboxes. I think that's a pretty good market value for them. But I'm genuinely trying to make sure that people have access to pieces. And I'm not trying to steal money from anybody by having them break their robot at my facility.
- [64:12]
B
It is a happy reality that may occur if given conditions. But the intention. Very good. Let's see, another question from Lyndon of Bob Baron and Pandemonium. You know, a classic Question. What's one hot take you have regarding Combat Robotics?
- [64:38]
C
Oh, I. I have to think. I try not to think mean thoughts. Yeah, it's. So there's not a lot of hot takes. Oh, I have one that's not gonna make very many people happy. But like, I. When people complain about any event not. I know there's a lot of complaints about NHRL and how they have like a house spot or whatever. I'm like, I'm happy to be here and I signed up to be here and I knew what I signed up for. So if you don't like it, don't compete there. That's my hot take. And I know a lot of people don't like it because they just want things to get like. You don't get better unless you provide productive criticism. But also, I feel like event runners are allowed to do what they want at their events.
- [65:38]
B
Yeah, there's a bound.
- [65:41]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that. But. But when it comes to, like, this is a stupid. A stupid one. But like, my floor was yellow. Aaron Armor. And that's because I walked into Lowe's to get paint and I saw the gray and I saw the yellow and I went, oh, it's my cage. And I got yellow. So if anybody complained to me about that, I'd be like, it's my event. I can paint the floor yellow if I want. Nobody's complained about it, just. But I was trying to come up with a scenario. But like, so there's some stuff where it's kind of like it's the event organizers event, so they can do what they want.
- [66:29]
B
There's a certain level of respect you sort of implicitly acknowledge going to an event, and that's sort of something has to be remembered as well. So I guess with that naturally a little dumb question side tangent as well. Are you gonna add more? Are you gonna change the colors for the floor for the arenas for harvest there? You're gonna go with the chartreuse next time? I mean, yes, we will.
- [66:53]
C
I still have yellow paint, so it's probably gonna be yellow. The issue is, is that when I paint the floor black, everybody decides to do their robot black in some other color. So then you can't see the robot. So I was like, oh, I'll do gray. But then I saw yellow and I was like, that's bright. Bob does have a robot that is all yellow, so that might have been a disadvantage for him, but it was fine. The 12 pound cage, I still have a ton of paint for that. So it's probably staying black until I run out of paint or it'll go to gray. But I think if I made that yellow, that I would have to suffer all year with a yellow floor that is shining in my eyes.
- [67:43]
A
High visibility floor. You should paint it reflective.
- [67:50]
B
Chrome floor. Yeah, chrome floor. Oh, my goodness. I wonder. Go ahead.
- [67:58]
A
Are you. Are you on a laptop right now?
- [68:01]
C
Yes.
- [68:01]
A
Can we take a tour of the Hive? Yeah.
- [68:06]
C
There's people here, so I have to. I'm. You're gonna get kids laughing at me, but I can. Let's see. Can I. Camera.
- [68:14]
A
Oh, it just died.
- [68:19]
B
Oh. For the audio listeners. Nothing's changed. Is about to change. That's how you use tree wheel. Guys, you can just pick up.
- [68:31]
C
Okay. Okay.
- [68:31]
A
There we go. Yeah.
- [68:33]
C
So we can go on a tour here. Let me take my keyboard off and just carry my tablet around. All right, so we're in the conference room. All our IT stuff is back there.
- [68:45]
A
Those are some nice chairs. Those look really comfortable.
- [68:53]
C
Oh, then we have the Vex room where we have our Vex IQ teams. We go down the hallway and you enter through the door. We have our check in system, so we can tell. Yeah.
- [69:12]
B
Are you going to zoom in on any of the photos of you that are in the hallways? Nobody.
- [69:15]
A
All right.
- [69:16]
C
There's only this one.
- [69:19]
B
That's the one.
- [69:22]
C
Then we have our kitchen.
- [69:24]
A
I'm realizing I have everything. I have the stream mirrored, So imagine. Imagine everything that is on the right is on the left. I was like, wow. There's been a lot of changes to the Hive since the last time I was.
- [69:43]
C
The combat room.
- [69:46]
A
Combat.
- [69:46]
C
All our stuff. So we have robot shelf.
- [69:53]
B
There are a lot of robots.
- [69:55]
A
Oh, my gosh.
- [69:55]
C
Robots. And our part storage. So if you ever need to build a robot, which I think Liam's doing right now, is that he is finding random parts in our part storage and building a robot with it.
- [70:12]
A
That's awesome.
- [70:15]
C
Look at all the wheels. Yeah, there are wheels that we don't use anymore. And then our robot grave is gone. I don't. I don't know where I put it, but you can see we've removed the moat. So punching air right now these metal walls are leaving.
- [70:37]
B
Shout out to Luke and all the rest of the old Copperhead team in Colorado and Pete, I'm sure they're just like punching air, seeing the cage. Oh, look, it's a bee force.
- [70:49]
C
Oh, yeah. In a pile.
- [70:52]
B
In a pile.
- [70:54]
C
And then we got our camp stuff. So we have a lot of the finger tech robot kits. We run termite camps, which Are our wooden robots. It's not really a weight class. And our ant weight stuff, which is kind of just in boxes right now. Oh, I got the. We can put this on camera. Let's see. Last year, pine vectus exploded a battery. Still right there.
- [71:24]
B
Gotta tag Alex Wang now.
- [71:27]
C
Yeah, it was soaking in there. The FRC team is here. So you guys get to see a bunch of high schoolers. So we'll go. This is the hallway for frc. They have all their banners. Oh, you can see Colin. We can go bother him.
- [71:47]
A
Colin.
- [71:51]
C
All right, guys, warning. I'm doing a tour for my interview. So we have the media center and the field house. There's the cage as we prep it for the event next week.
- [72:07]
A
Nice. Oh, look, you've got it on a trailer. So that you can just. Oh, that's awesome.
- [72:13]
B
Fills in, feels out.
- [72:14]
A
And then do you take it off the trailer or do you just leave it on the trailer?
- [72:17]
C
No, this stays on the trailer. And then this is our shop.
- [72:21]
A
Yeah.
- [72:21]
C
So we hook air up to this. Does that work?
- [72:27]
A
I make my students actually crank that. Man, that.
- [72:30]
B
The hydraulic crank.
- [72:33]
A
Kids are getting soft.
- [72:35]
C
Oh, yeah. The hose is right here.
- [72:38]
B
That's really cool.
- [72:39]
A
They're getting soft. Kids are getting soft.
- [72:42]
C
And then we got our different sauce malays and the mill and the router.
- [72:54]
B
There's just so much ability to anyone, I guess, who wants to look at some ideas where they might do for a workshop. This is a really good reference because you're able to do vast majority of what robot work needs through all the stuff here. That router off the rest of the shop, that was like 90% of it.
- [73:13]
A
You've got like. Like the highest level, like Tier 2 equip.
- [73:21]
C
This is our bumble, which is our outreach robot. It shoots balls. This is the FRC robot. It also shoots balls. It has a hairbrush inside of it.
- [73:39]
B
Would you say it's also a big part of the activity of the FRC campaign? Because hairbrush a common tool.
- [73:46]
C
I don't know. Is hairbrush a common tool for frc? No.
- [73:51]
B
Like, everyone,
- [73:54]
C
there's Colin. He's gonna be driving Reaper.
- [73:58]
B
Yeah.
- [73:59]
C
Are you excited for pro tour? Yeah. I don't know if you guys can hear him. Okay, well, he said yes. He's excited for pro tour.
- [74:11]
A
Very cool.
- [74:12]
B
Very cool.
- [74:13]
C
Now we can make our way back to the conference room. All the wood that we have to put in the cage this weekend, making everybody walk over it. We got the field house and all our tables that everybody's going to use to put Their robots on.
- [74:33]
A
Nice, nice.
- [74:34]
B
Get excited. Have hystericals.
- [74:38]
A
So I'm hysterical.
- [74:41]
B
So that's like, you know, it's a house tour of the hive. There you go.
- [74:47]
C
Yep.
- [74:48]
B
It's really cool.
- [74:53]
C
I think that's. That's really it. Oh, there's a big go right here. You got the Hive logo and dumpsters.
- [75:05]
A
All the dumb.
- [75:05]
B
Oh, those. You need bigger shelves pretty soon.
- [75:09]
A
I know. That's great.
- [75:13]
B
Good stuff.
- [75:14]
A
That's great.
- [75:16]
B
Sets the tone. Becoming the hyperst area.
- [75:19]
C
How I get in here.
- [75:22]
A
Eyeball scanner.
- [75:27]
B
That's really cool. Now this is. This is the kind of stuff that people should aspire to. And I guess part of the beauty then to have hysteria is new builders show up like, oh, this is what I would. I want to be a part of. Especially if they live in the area or if they want to prepare their own stuff in the future. So you're a new builder, you're curious about what to do to make robots.
- [75:52]
C
Reference this and if you ever need any help. We love helping people. A big thing of what we do is education and helping other people develop their robot teams or develop their robot. So if you need any help, feel free to reach out. If I don't know the answer, I'm sure we have somebody here who does.
- [76:14]
B
It's awesome stuff. It's highly recommend. You want to crack good people. Probably stems. Good organization. Let's see. I think that's all the big sleeve I had to talk about. Jake, any other the party questions?
- [76:38]
A
Sorry, my mind just went blank. No, I do not. I'm. I'm hysterical for Hive hysteria. I'm very sorry that I'll be missing it, but I am excited.
- [76:48]
C
I wish I could be here at some point.
- [76:50]
A
I know, I know. I'm considering my options as far as I can.
- [76:56]
B
You know what? Just move to the state of Maryland. Simple as that.
- [77:02]
A
It's not that far from Cincinnati. It's only 10 hours.
- [77:09]
B
That's just a day trip for you quick.
- [77:11]
A
You'd be surprised.
- [77:15]
B
You'd be surprised.
- [77:18]
C
Now, are you regretting not signing up for Hive Hysteria with the Pro Tour invite? Because do you plan to compete at October to earn your Pro Tour spot?
- [77:29]
A
No, I'm going to September Pro Tour.
- [77:33]
C
Don't want to go to the November one too?
- [77:35]
A
No, because then we have champs.
- [77:37]
C
I can't.
- [77:39]
B
You don't want to fight Brazil because they're going to. And New Zealand because they're going.
- [77:44]
C
Top robot from Brazil and New Zealand is going.
- [77:48]
B
Exactly.
- [77:49]
A
I was on a plane on the way back from California recently. And the woman who sat next to me, she's like, I'm from Brazil. And she had very little English, and all I could translate was, I fight robots against Brazil, and they always win. That was the most. I was able to lob that one across the language barrier. But I don't. I. I still don't think she. I was like, look, Black Dragon.
- [78:16]
B
Like, see?
- [78:17]
A
See?
- [78:24]
B
She was very nice. She was very nice. Well, even if you don't go dive Syria or go to preparing for the finals and all the details that go with that, it's still really awesome to hear not only the cool stuff that you're doing, Maximizer, but also the cool stuff you with all the stuff with Hexbaria, Aaron Darmer before the upcoming events, like Water's Edge and such. That's all gonna be awesome. So I'm looking forward to it. I won't be pro YouTube. Y' all have a great time. Let me know how it goes. I'm sure you know we'll have a report about that at some point there. For coming on. Thank you so much for sharing all those stuff that you're doing.
- [79:10]
C
Thank you for having me. This was fun.
- [79:15]
B
I'm sure we'll do it again.
- [79:18]
A
Thank you so much. Zoe, best of luck with Hive Hysteria. Thank you to our audience.
- [79:22]
B
Thanks for coming and.