← Outside of the Box
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- [00:02]
A
Christine talks with Sean Becker about his Thagomizer design and so much more on this episode of Outside of the Box. As far as I know, it's more or less the only active 3 pound overhead attack robot in, in the entire US which made it really easy because no one had armor. One or two people might have some scrap pieces of titanium, but by and large I'd go and just eat one battery off the other foreign.
- [00:31]
B
And welcome to another episode of Outside of the Box. And today I feel like this episode, I was talking about it beforehand, is a long time coming because I, I feel like I've had most significant folks in the Combat Robotics space on, but I have Sean Becker here with me who I have not had on the show. And it's always exciting to have a new guest, but especially somebody that I has just made a big impact in the Combat Robotics space. So welcome to the show.
- [01:05]
A
Yeah, hey, it's great to be here and I'm really excited to just talk some bot.
- [01:10]
B
Yes, I think we always all are. I don't think that there would ever be a time where any of us would say now we don't want to talk about combat robots. So yeah, I'm excited to talk about it. Of course. I think most of most people who know you know you heavily because of the Thagomizer style design and everything. And something that I thought was pretty cool in my research is I knew that like you kind of kick started that, but I didn't realize that there was literally an academic paper that was written to like say why this is an ideal design. And as somebody who is like super academic myself, I thought that was so cool that, you know, you come up with this thesis and say this is the way to do it and then go out there and do that. So I kind of want to talk about that origination of Thagamizer and everything that it spawned.
- [02:14]
A
Yeah, no, that's, it's really funny that you managed to find that because that was actually my senior capstone. So I started my, I started getting into Robotics in 2021 and that was the, my, just before my capstone year and going into my final year I really wanted to do something ready to Comet Robotics. And I got really lucky and my capstone professor actually said, yes, go ahead, make a 12 pound version of your robot as your capstone. So I had a, I was, I was team lead. I had four other people helping me with this little project and it was just really fun to one, still do my, my, my robot stuff. But then two, like have an actual academic side to this as well.
- [03:04]
B
Yeah, I thought that it was really neat because I mean, to me, half of combat robotics, as far as the competitive aspect of it, is looking at your competitors and trying to solve a problem. Right. Like there's these robots that would be difficult to defeat and you have to find a way to do that. And so part of that is that innovative and creative process. Is that something like an aspect of the sport that you really enjoy? Because that's kind of the vibe that I get.
- [03:36]
A
Yeah, no, I mean that's, that's why I think I do Karma robotics above like kind of any other sport, because there is just so much creativity that goes into it because you're not really bound, like, yeah, you have your weight bonuses or your weight limits and, you know, a couple safety related rules, but other than that, it is just, there's so much freedom in what you can do. And the reality is that we just haven't even kind of scratched the surface of all the possible archetypes that are out there. We are still kind of in the same mindset. Like, okay, spinners, Spinners are great, but there's so many ways you can possibly use a spinner. And that's what kind of surprised me when I came up with the whole Thagomizer concept is that put the, put the spoon in the back and whip around and suddenly you can, you can hit things that no one's ever really bothered arm like armoring before. So it, it really came into its own just by, by realizing that there is always more. More out there.
- [04:37]
B
For sure. I'm curious. I, I didn't read through the entire paper, but I assume that there probably have been combat robots prior to that that led some degree of inspiration between you kind of going the direction that you did. So I want to talk about that from an inspirational perspective because I think most builders today got inspired by a robot or a builder that came before them for sure.
- [05:04]
A
Yeah. It's actually kind of funny. Like everyone talks about Tombstone as being like the big bot, but Tombstone's like little whip maneuver really was the single driving factor behind the Thagomizer idea. Because his robot isn't redesigned to whip around. It is the archetypical horizontal spinner. But oftentimes he would kind of bait out people to go towards his exposed wheels and then turn the entire robot around and hit them. And it was incredibly effective because when you have that whip around, that turning speed, you hit people harder, you get more bite, and that just allows you to transfer. So Much more energy than you would by just trying to drive into someone normally.
- [05:47]
B
Yeah, for sure. Now of course, you know future facing from when you designed that robot. What are your thoughts on just the kind of how others. Obviously Jake Hoffman being the most famous with Maximizer, taking that style of robot and having success with it. Honestly I'm surprised there aren't more people who have tried it. But it obviously is a very effective design. So what are your thoughts on that?
- [06:17]
A
Yeah, I mean Jake of course has to be mentioned because he is probably the most successful person with the thagomizer type of robot. No, Jake, fantastic guy. I met him actually in the same year that I was doing the paper and the capstone. He came out to one of the Norwalks and we had a really, really long conversation about the whole design. And I learned a lot from it. He learned a lot from it and he kind of came away from that wanting to build his own version. So I kind of helped him along bit in the beginning and then he's obviously taken that design a lot further now. But yeah, when it comes to like, why aren't there more thagomized? It's a really interesting question because like I love the idea, you know, like I, I think it's one of those few robots that have a really distinctive fighting style. A lot of robots, you know, they just, they drive into their opponent and that's, that's kind of the, the extent of their game plan. But thagomizers and hammer swords as well, like they, they, they have a game plan that doesn't involve just driving in. They have, they want to whip around. They have these almost special move robots don't have. So I think they're incredibly fun to drive because it's not just drive forwards, it's this kind of cat and mouse of you've got to get them to the right distance and then engage this swing behavior. Why there's not more thagomizes. I think that the thagomizer design really relies a lot on drive. It needs to be able to turn around quickly and that is really hard to do on wood. So Jake's put a lot of effort into designing cleats to help him swing around. But fundamentally you can't swing a thagomizer around on wood as fast as you can on metal. And yeah, for some reason most thagomizers have actually been wood thagomizers, which I find crazy and they still find success. But I think because it's a design that's only, that's more Effective on metal than wood. That's why you might not see quite as many of it. And it's also a hard robot to drive. Like Jake will tell you too. Like Diagonizes, they just drive like a bus because you have so much weight kind of in the back. When you try to drive forwards and then turn, it has a real bad tendency to kind of overswing. So you kind of have two different distinct driving styles. So if you watch me versus Jake drive, I drive it much slower, especially on steel because my goals are kind of like drive up slowly to them and then whip around at exactly the right time. Whereas Jake, he's a lot more like run in there, swing that massive weapon around and just blow everything up. And it's awesome because you get to see that kind of reflected in the build of the robot because his tail is this massive uhmw, like billet. It's awesomely built. There's, there's lots of reinforcement because that's, that's his driving style is really like throw the weapon in there. Whereas my Thagomizer style robots typically have a, a very much smaller blade, a hub motor style where I'm not relying on the opponent basically I'm relying on the opponent never hitting that weapon. You know, I'm, I'm controlling the front and then just swinging around quickly for a short shot. Their side.
- [09:36]
B
Yeah, yeah. And that actually makes a lot of sense because I tried to rack my brain about it. It seems like every time that there's a, a pretty successful robot, especially nhrl, then you see tons of them. You in the day when Shredded bro was, was, you know, doing really well. You saw all kinds of similar robots to that Mako, all kinds of overhead attack bots. But yeah, I mean it makes sense with the wood floors that that may be a bit more challenging for folks to attempt. Now speaking of overhead attack bots, I also want to talk about Strike Point because I think this is another robot that people seem to be very afraid of, which is understandable. I mean overhead attack bots have a reputation for piercing batteries. I mean that's, I think the main concern. All of a sudden you go up in a cloud of lipo smoke. What was the desire to build that type of robot as opposed to Thagomizer? Because obviously two very different robots, right?
- [10:44]
A
So the funny thing is that they're actually all kind of connected because when I first started, like my very first robot was a robot called Breakpoint and that was an Antwait Antweight Sobot four wheel drive. And it was kind of the, you know, it's the antweight version of what would then become Strike Point. The reason why I came up with Thagomizer is because at the time I had a. I think I'd won my first three competitions ever with Breakpoint. I'm like, this is a really good design, but how do I beat that? Because that's kind of something I'm always thinking about whenever I see a new robot. I'm like, how does it work first off? And then how do I beat it? So I had Breakpoint and I'm like, okay, I have this massive wedge on Breakpoint. No horizontal can really go through it, but my wedge, like pretty much every other wedge ends, you know, it's only in the front. So that kind of brought me to the whole Thagomizer concept. It's like, how do I attack those sides? Strike Point. Then basically I had. I had done Thagomizer minimizer, and I just wanted to make a Beetle because I see beetles as being pretty much the most competitive class, if not the most high. You know, of course, 30s. Take. Take more effort and planning and everything to build, but just the sheer amount of beetles like this, there's so much going on, there's so much energy that really drew me to that. So I wanted to make a Beetle and I had the option of, you know, do I. Do I scale up Strike. Sorry, do I scale up Breakpoint or do I scale up Thagomizer? And I went with Breakpoint. So then we ended up with a, you know, the four wheel drive hammer saw, because Breakpoint was full drive. So I wanted to make kind of continue that. And yeah, Breakpoint was very successful as well. I think it also won its first three events. And part of that reason is because no one at the time really knew how to fight them because overhead attack robots just really didn't exist in the four wheel drive class because there was Tothic, there was samurai, and both of those were kind of retired by the time I brought Strikepoint into the field. So as far as I know, it's more or less the only active 3 pound overhead attack robot in the entire US which made it really easy because no one had armor. You know, I'd go to an event and one or two people might have some scrap pieces of titanium, but by and large, I'd go and just eat one battery after the other. And it was really smooth sailing. And then with time, of course, people caught on. People created their own hammer saws, and with more hammer saws that there Came more. More top armor. Mako, of course, really instilled fear in a lot of. In a lot of the field of. Just like you need top armor or you're going to get your entire robot cut in half. So with time now, like, Hammersaurs are pretty much one of the meta robots. I mean, if you're looking at 2026, I believe it's. It's Hammersaurs and Verts. It's kind of like the.
- [13:56]
B
The.
- [13:56]
A
The top bots represented in the field at the mom.
- [14:00]
B
Yeah, it's pretty crazy. I mean, the Wall Part two just won a dumpster this year, so that just goes to show, like, the effectiveness of that type of robot. Now, something I'm curious to talk about, because I believe it was just one event that you did that, but it was quite a lethal combination, is when you brought Endpoint to NHRL and did a collaboration with Supreme Ruler, which at the time I would have said was a pretty scary combination, because Supreme Ruler on its own obviously was a very effective robot. But when you combine the ability to pin a robot with the ability to pierce through the top of a robot, that's additionally scary, right?
- [14:44]
A
No, that was. That was a really fun collaboration. The problem was that I had. This was basically the very first outing of StrikePoint MK2. So the very first version of StrikePoint v1 was more square. You know, from the top down, it was just a square robot. And V2 kind of incorporated a lot of things that I had been kind of musing about for the last one and a half years. But I tried to change a lot of things at the same time. I mean, I went to a hub motor for the Hammersaw. Instead of using just a direct drive with a nylon hub. I Two shufflers. I have this now kind of flex chassis where there's multiple layers of carbon fiber that slide over each other to absorb impact. Problem is that. Oh, and then I also swapped the newer repeat maxes. It was a lot of changes all at once, and the robot worked, but it kind of struggled. And Supreme Ruler was also a modified version of it, so he took off a pound for that. So I think both robots weren't quite functioning at their peak performance. But you still have two really good robots, so they were still able to do quite a bit of damage and kind of run through the competition.
- [16:06]
B
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I would take it as a successful event for sure. Now, I'm curious just to get your take in 2026 with the combat robotics landscape, because between just certain types of designs becoming More meta. And then also different changes in tournament rules and stuff like that have caused people to maybe rethink their designs and things of that nature. What do you think about just those overall changes, both meta way wise and rules way wise and the designs that have come out of that as a result?
- [16:45]
A
Yeah, I mean, the Norwalk rule change obviously is kind of one of the big topics at the moment. You know, with, with the remaining, you know, the shuffler bonus stayed the same, which was one big thing, and then the whole change to how the judges kind of scored the entire fight. So I'll start with the shuffler bonus. So, obviously I have a shuffling robot. I haven't. I've never actually built a 4.5 shuffling robot. Strike Point has always remained at 3 pounds. And then I kind of just add random fun things to it. That is going to be interesting going forwards because mini bots are fun and it's, you know, I. I have been doing a lot of work with shufflers because I really do believe that they can kind of become basically equal to two wheels, you know, because kind of what led me down this entire path is again going back to thagomizers. Thagomizers struggle on wood. How do you get the most grip possible to turn a thagomize as quickly as possible? Well, I think the answer is shufflers, because shufflers have this unique ability to really drive themselves into the ground and just produce a lot more grip than kind of any other wheel could possibly do. So I've spent a lot of time in the last year or two kind of like honing these what I call equal weight shufflers. I actually have a version of this and this is kind of exclusive footage. This is a shuffle pod. Hold up. I gotta hold it in front of me. So these are the shuffle pods that were being run on point. This is the mini bot I was running at Norwalk Champs. What's interesting about these is that if you look, it is a shuffler with a urethane wheel wheel in the middle. So it's a tangent drive shuffler. What's crazy about this is that this entire assembly weighs, I believe, 40 grams. And that is less than a repeat compact by itself, not even including the wheels. So this little mechanism at the moment would get you a weight bonus, but it's quite effective, it drives well and it takes a lot of the advantages of a gearbox being the greater reduction and applies it to the shuffler, which gives you this really, really lightweight thing. This is a whole different topic. So we can get back to that later. It's just something I've been working on for a while. I'm quite proud of it getting back to shoppers, though I do think that with this technology, with all the other progress that people in the field have done, it's just about time to get rid of it. I don't think it really deserves a place anymore just because, like, my personal opinion is that it used to be a really cool, novel thing. If you came with a shuffling robot, it's like, wow, you know, look at how intricate this thing is and how novel. And now a lot of the kind of literature is out there. There's lots of CAD designs, there's lots of explanations. You can go to the Norwalk Discord and find CAD models and pictures of how to do it. So that kind of, like, novelty has worn off a lot. And now I'm hoping with shuffles becoming more, you know, better and better and closer to wheels, that at some point, you know, just get rid of it. Let people continue building shufflers. By that point, it becomes cool again because, you know, you have. If you can build an equal weight shuffler, that's, that's what I think is, is so interesting about the sport. Going back to our previous topics, like, we have so much freedom. Why do we need like this kind of artificial buff to one specific, one specific, specific archetype? So going to the other top part of the topic, then judges, that's definitely affected hammersaws a lot. I mean, we saw that with some of the controversial decisions because a lot of hammer saws, like, they're, they can tack, they can kill, of course, but they really are control bots at heart. And the new rules have really made winning as a control bot very difficult because you need to be constantly using your weapon. And whereas that's a bit more feasible with a, a lifting type robot, if you can really, like build up that lifter and constantly fire it even into other weapons. Hammer. It is really, really hard to make a hammer saw that can survive a direct weapon weapon engagement with another vert. So you're also kind of put into this, this quandary now where the judges essentially, they decide every time you pin whether you could have attacked. And if you didn't attack, then they dock you points. And that's really hard with a hammer sword because oftentimes you'll see me when I'm, when I pin someone, I will do like a quick lap around the box to try and like, see exactly where that hammersaw will land. Because, like, the last thing I want to do is lose my weapon. The judges kind of have to make a snap decision from some weird angle of whether I should apply that hammersaw or not. And based on that decision, that decision alone, that defect, like, that's, that affects how many points I get for that engagement. So that's kind of annoying to, like, have someone else that's not me and, you know, not my opponent really influencing the outcome of that, of that match. And then, of course, once you lose your weapon with the current rule set as a hammersaw, you are in trouble. That's the best way I can put it. But because it's, it's just really hard to get any points at that point because, you know, hammer souls, they aren't designed to damage with their weapon. If you're lucky, you can kind of jam your weapon into your opponent's weapon. But with a hammer saw, like, that's, you know, a 40, 50 hub motor, you're now willfully just destroying just in the hope of getting a couple more pinpoints. So it's rough, especially compared to a vertical spinner where as long as they're driving into you, they're kind of farming these, these maximum aggression points.
- [22:57]
B
Yeah, yeah, it definitely is a difficult problem as far as finding a way to make that all work and still allow that, that level of creative, of freedom. So I, I kind of hope as time goes on that something more comes out of that as far as understanding what that should look like moving forward. Everything is trial and error with combat robotics, including judging rules. So, yeah, what, I mean, you kind of already showed a little bit of, of that as far as, like, the, the shuffler pod and maybe some things that you're working on. But that kind of was going to be my next question of is there anything that you're actively working on at this point moving forward? Because, you know, obviously you've been known to come up with some really innovative designs, and I'm not sure if, because of, you know, all of the changes and things like that that we've seen, that that's kind of led you into any different directions creatively.
- [23:59]
A
Right. So the shufflers, as I mentioned, I've been working on for a while now, and, and they were actually kind of done by the time of Norwalk Champs. I had teased revealing them and I showed them off to a lot of people at Champs just to kind of get their reaction because there's so much you can learn by just showing someone else a contraption. Because when you're designing something, oftentimes you get very, very single minded on how to approach a problem in one single way. Then as soon as you show it to someone else they go like, but why not this? And then another light bulb goes off. And that's really what this community is all about is just having all these amazing people to kind of bounce ideas off of and through that collaboration kind of bring the sport a bit higher. So yeah, so I was working on those shuffles for a while. I've kind of at this point not worked too much more on them because I wanted to make a video and life gets in the way and it's just hard. Like designing and kind of innovating is really fun. Making a video on that is not the part I find fun. I have like a two year backlog now on fight videos and I just never get to it. So it's something I need to do at some point. Looking forward though for the next year or so, I think with the judging rules really penalizing hammer saws, I am looking into flamethrowers because I think they're just, they're a really good solution in the current landscape because they really, you know, talking about farming aggression points earlier even though the aggression doesn't exist and now it's I think damage and harm or state, I don't know, it's, it's, it's a long document. I can't remember all of it. But flamethrowers allow you to kind of generate this, this, this attack score from a safe distance, which is great as a hammer because hammer saws and flamethrowers actually naturally coexist quite well because a lot of the forks and the front end controlling geometry of a hammersaw lends itself very well to a flamethrower as well. So that's something I've been looking into and that's kind of it at the moment. You know, I want to bring one count thagomizer back and get that, that running. And another thing that I've been really looking into are these things I've been calling flapforks. So I have actually thagomizer right here. But on the front here, these are what I've been calling lap forks. So a long time ago I had the idea of like how do you make TPU armor better? And I had this idea inspired by Jameson Gough's singular flap on the side of saw blaze for this kind of array of flap armor. And that's become really, really popular. You see it all over the place now, these flaps of TPU and that was originally designed to fight against Droopy, because Droopy is this obviously massive thing of chaos. And when I'm fighting him with a hammersel, the last thing I wanted him to do is kind of fly over the top and hit my uprights and all that stuff. So the time is just a wall of TPU that did quite well. And people have adapted them into forks, which is now Baleen. And I've been kind of inspired when looking at Jolly Baby, how they were able to get underneath Cold Snap with these TPU forks and kind of destabilize that massive robot with what was, you know, these tiny little things. So I've been kind of working into these, like, TPU flapforks where it looks like a normal TPU fork on the outside, but the geometry, and they have these reinforced ridges that ride along the top, means that as a horizontal tries to drive into them, they hit these reinforced ridges and kind of naturally bump up along the slope. And it's so far in the testing that I've done, and I've made a couple of these for other people, it's been really, really effective at just destabilizing and stopping horizontals. So I think it's something I'm really excited about because it's always fun to come up with new counters. I'm a bit worried about horizontals in general because so far it's been effective. And I think horizontals as an archetype are just fantastic. But they are one of the archetypes that just really rely on that shuffler bonus to have that weapon power to just kind of blast through people, because people have gotten really good at armoring their robots. I don't know, five, ten years ago, a big horizontal could come in and do a lot of damage. But there's just so much, you know, advancements in TPU and titanium wedges and all this. All this TPU spam that. It's getting really hard for them to kind of get through that material. But, yeah, that's another thing that I'm working on and want to improve.
- [29:09]
B
Well, that's exciting. I would be very excited and scared to see your take on a flamethrower. They're pretty scary to fight as it is, and. And certainly have seemed to be pretty effective at various weight classes. So, yeah, I mean, like you said, being able to attack from a distance and not have to worry about it as much is a good problem to have. So. Yeah. Are you planning on any nhrl appearances in 2026? 6.
- [29:45]
A
We'll see. I mean, there is going to be hopefully a Norwalk in California in July. It's not been officially announced, and I'm kind of just waiting to see where that's, where that's going. So with the Norwalk potentially coming so close, you know, I haven't really wanted to fly all the way out to, to the east coast to, to do that. So I'm just kind of waiting and, and we'll see. Hopefully we get some information soon, but we'll see. You know, I mean, Norwalk tried to do some out of state events in the past, and they didn't always plan out. So we'll see. But if that doesn't work, I'm sure, you know, maybe the November Norwalk or something. That's always a fun one. So I might, I might be back for that.
- [30:35]
B
Well, that's very exciting. I'm sure that everyone will be, you know, intrigued to see what, what you come with if you, if you do. But yeah, well, I, I appreciate you coming on, you know, very insightful stuff.
- [30:53]
A
Thank you for having me.
- [30:54]
B
Of course. All right, well, if anybody's watching this, please make sure, of course, that you, like, subscribe, share, comment, engage with the content, all of that good stuff. Keep watching every Combat Robotics event that you can in the meantime, and we'll see everybody next time on the show.