07/30/2019
"Done in 40 seconds"
I'm in the Three Continent Club! I was honored to be one of the 16 International Teams chosen to fight in China's Super King of Bots II. I've now been paid to fight robots on 3 continents and have appeared on every major televised competition. Not bad for an old circus clown.
Anyway, off to the games, arrive at the venue and there is no safety officer, pit officer, person in charge, or anything resembling someone who knew what was going on at all.
We decided to just claim a pit table and get the bot ready so we commandeered a table in the back, that later turned out to be a table right in front on the main path. Great decision Ed!
The first couple days at any event are insane but KOB was just purchased by Ubi-Tech and a new production crew was hired that had never done a robot combat event before. They simply had no clue what they were in for. As a result they were unprepared and no one knew what to do or what was going on.
There were no safety inspections, a fact I was trying to get them to recognize was not acceptable. Nicely of course, I didn't want to be "that guy" by complaining from the start, but Safety is very important to me and not having any safety personnel at all is a bad thing.
Hey KOB, Get a safety crew! It's kind of a big deal you know?
Anyway, there is a test box, sweet, we get the bot ready and drop him in.
He doesn't work. Great. Flipper works but only one side of the drive runs.
All the driving practice and he never had this issue, but the first time in the box and he failed. Of course, now I look like an idiot, in front of all the other builders gathered around. Awesome. Take him back out, take him apart and find out a chain tensioner bolt had actually snapped, probably from me over tightening it. Sweet, easy to fix, not an issue I have to address, pop in another, tension the chain and back to the test box.
Sweet! Drive is working fine now, OK, fire the weapon!
Nothing...Happens...Sh*t...
I was not aware at the time that someone had accidentally closed the weapon regulator. BTW, the high pressure regulator works backwards to a standard one. So instead of opening it more they actually closed it, thus turning off the weapon. Oops, hey, stuff happens.
This meant we had no working weapon, but production wanted to film some stuff and had me drive around without it for a few minutes, Fine, I'll figure out what's wrong later.
What I didn't know at the time was that this footage was for the "stars" to judge the bots with. The weapon wasn't active at that time so they never saw it fire. This had the effect of convincing them that we simply had no weapon. Great, wish I had known how important that footage was.
Anyway, back to the bench, find the issue was simply the regulator adjustment. Awesome, easy fix, not a problem I have to address, back to the test box.
100% go! Everything works great, of course now they say we can't throw things around with the flipper because one of the other flippers broke a light in the test box ceiling. Whatever, we're ready to fight!
Next day, International Teams were not needed. Cool, "what about tomorrow" I asked.
Nope, International Teams have a couple days off while they film the Chinese Teams first rounds. I get permission to go to Disney because, well, Shanghai Disney! How many chances am I going to get in my life to go to Shanghai Disney? Was told to have fun and that we weren't needed (foreshadowing). I rented a van to fit the whole Team in, grabbed a Translator (ours didn't want to go to Disney, seriously! I said "I'll pay your way in, no worries, we need a translator." She refused to go. My "Assistant" simply refused to assist, so I borrowed one from another Team who was, in fact, very happy to get a free trip to Disney.) and we were off!
Had a blast, rode the rides, saw some great shows, missed out on the KOB group PIC. Yup, they decided to shoot the group pic while I and my Team were all at Disney so we missed out. Worth it! I found the Traditional Chinese Circus there in the Tarzan show and it was amazing! Anyone who knows me knows my history and how much the circus means to me. To see the performers do a style and the crowd just sitting on their hands made me literally cry. Years and years of work to do what those performers do and the crowd gave them nothing back. I guess the days of the circus really are over. Not one person I spoke to even knew what a clown was. Sad.
Oh man, the selfies! We had two attractive American girls with us yet people wanted to take pictures with me. lol. Old men, young women, they all wanted selfies with the crazy haired American guy. Evidently, in China, I am "Fashionable" lol. Who'da thunk it? It was like being a headlining solo act again, I forgot how much I missed that. Good day.
Next day. Shuttle Bus to the venue and ready to fight!
BTW, the shuttle buses rocked. Well done there KOB. Lots of buses and they were fairly nice ones. getting back and forth was easy and pleasant.
We (the 16 International Teams) are finally set up in the show pits, there were 2 pits, the one you see are the show pits and the real one where we worked. They put us on a table up front, cool placement, front row, sweet. That means at least they liked the looks of the bot.
Now one thing you will never understand unless you were there. Ever see the gag with a translator where the person talks for like 10 minutes and then the translator just says "Yes"?
That's what it was like, the Director would explain things and the translator would say something like "None of that matters just stand there." If it didn't matter why did the Director say it?
Anyway, there's a button and we have to hit the button to pick a random bot then go straight to the arena and fight. If you win you will replace that bot on it's league. Seems simple enough.
Lots of talking, lots of stuff you didn't see was filmed, no one said you had to hit the button a second time to stop it. Even though like 3 people went before me I never noticed the second hit because we were all watching the video screen to see who got picked. I hit it and was watching the screen waiting for it to stop for like a minute and the PA came up behind me "You gotta hit it again" doughp! I'm an idiot, anyway, hit it again, who do I get,
Deep-Sea Shark, lol a Shark themed bot! Talk about irony.
Ok let's fight! We do our entrance bit, you missed it, shame because it was pretty cool.
The drone won't respond, eeeh who cares, drones suck anyway, let's fight!
Lights go on and it's finally time.
Well the first thing I noticed was my awesome new Battle Claw Tires don't have enough traction for the current gearing. It's sliding around like a penguin with a polar bear on his ass. Too much power and not enough grab, crap. OK let's try to just keep the weapon aimed at the other bot and "Wait for a good hit". I was just starting to get the hang of it, the flame effects fired in the arena and I looked away for one split second, boom! That's all it took, I lost the other bot behind Excelsior! (one of the problems of having a tall bot) and right as I located it, he slammed into the wheel guard and popped me a good one.
The guard did it's job perfectly, The ablative fin sucked up most of the hit and the guard itself barely deformed 1/4". it pays to use good steel, However, when you're dealing with chains, 1/4" is as good as a mile. The chain on that side popped off. Greaaaaaat.
Design flaw #1 Triple hung tires. I went with a single dead axle that is suspended inside the bot, just outside the body module and at the outside of the wheel where it attaches to the guards. That means that when the wheel guard deformed it took the axle with it, bent it, and that made the other chain snap off.
Design Flaw #2 Axle was too thin and one solid piece. During the build I chose the thinner of the 2 axles I had for weight reasons. One of the bad decisions I made. It was also a one piece axle so anything that happened to one side carried over to the other side.
BOTH sides of the drive chains popped off in that first hit. One hitter quitter. Absolutely nothing wrong with the bot, except the fact that the motors were no longer connected to the tires.
First fight, less than 40 seconds, first loss. Crap.
Walk through the losers door. Sad walk.
Seriously, 6 months work and over sixteen thousand dollars, done in under 40 seconds.
Can you understand how that feels? 20 years now I have been playing this game, I don't mind losing. Sometimes, like the fight I had with Warhead, losing can even be fun. Hell, almost every fight is fun. But this, a one hit KO in under 40 seconds. I was ashamed of myself and my skills and I hated walking out that losers door.
I swore that the next time I left that set it would be through the winners door.
Try to shake it off, let's get to the pits to figure out what happened.
OK I can't go to the pits. As the Team Captain I have to stay on set in the losers section now. Wasted the rest of the day stuck on my ass in the bleachers. Fortunately John was there and with the help of our 2 temporary team mates they got the bot stripped down as far as they could
It was late by the time I was finally released from "sitting on these hard ass bleachers for absolutely no reason" duty, get to the pits and have to play "patch" for awhile to keep everyone happy, and then, finally, I can work on the bot!
I can see what happened and what I need to do to fix it. This is a problem I do have to address. I need to shorten the axle and remove the braces from the wheel guard so what happened in that fight will never happen again. I also need to split the axle in the middle so the sides can't affect each other. Tricky bit about new designs is you never really know until they get hit. I thought hanging the tires on the outside would be good. I learned it wasn't. I thought having one solid axle would be stronger but didn't realize the transitive affects it would have.
"Damage is just weakness leaving the bot."
I stayed up all night rebuilding the entire bot by myself. All alone in the pits except for a couple people crashing, who I am sure hated me by the morning because of the noise.
I took out every nut and bolt and checked every connection. Cut the axle in half, this idea was included in the design as an option so all I had to do was cut it and put it back, after straightening it.
Loctited and re-torqued everything, bent the tire guard straight and welded the corner a little, re-tensioned the chains (I'm starting to really dislike chains by now) and put it all back together.
Total loss from the fight, 1 ablative fin (signed and given to the Shark guys as a Trophy), about 3 inches of axle shaft and a nights sleep. Not to bad in retrospect.
I would like to give a quick shout out to Deep Sea Shark Team! You kicked my ass man, great job!
Great guys, we chatted and hung out before and after, hard with the language barrier but still a good bunch. Watch out next time!
I finished up about 6am, tried to take a nap but it wasn't happening. Too hyped on adrenaline. I was all set for the next round of qualifiers with a fully rebuilt bot ready to fight! Let's go!
Next time, First round qualifiers.
Clarification. In my intro they say that Sharko was Sweet 16 at BattleBots. He was NEVER.
Sharko has never even been an official competitor at BattleBots so it's simply impossible. I corrected them when I saw it but they ignored the correction.
CIAO!
Edward Robinson
Captain - Team Blaze
