“Rather than being made of carbon strands that give you splinters and is super strong and super stiff,” Schultz says. A viewer contacted Schultz saying Tegris is a better solution and sent along with some samples. Huge’s wheels, regarded as the bot’s weakness when confronting opponents with horizontal spinning weapons or diamond-edged saws, were crafted from a new thermoplastic composite called Tegris, which is recyclable and durable. The postponement lasted through the summer, enough time for the Huge team to “pull off some new tricks.” We need to redesign the entire robot to accommodate these other motors. “So, we’re stuck at the last second going ‘Oh, my god. “We ordered a bunch of them that were listed in stock, and then we kind of went on our merry way.”īut the motors, which were made in China, became suddenly unavailable because of the pandemic, Schultz says. “We had a really tough build season because we designed the whole robot around a certain new motor that we were going to swap to,” Schultz says.
This season, Schultz used the season’s postponement to improve Huge’s power and durability. At 1M tall, it looms over and pounds opponents with its weapon ( Figure 1). Huge featured large ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMW) wheels carrying boxed mechanized components and weapon, a spinning AR400 vertical bar, along its axle. Huge has been a staple in the BattleBots tournament for the past four seasons, winning seven of 12 matches and making it to the top 16 last season. Because of non-disclosure agreements, the winners won’t be known until mid-January, but here’s a look at how Schultz and Huge’s BattleBots journey continued this year.įigure 1: Team Huge rolls out Huge for the next match at BattleBots (Source: Courtesy Jonathan Schultz) The show airs Thursdays on the Discovery Channel. Although Huge lost, it is still in the running for the tournament. Huge, which sports Mouser and TTI branding on its body, lost its opening match by knockout to Mammoth, a tall, wire-framed bot that flipped Huge and caused one of its oversized wheels to lodge against the BattleBox arena’s Lexan wall. In October, 60 teams of competitors returned to Long Beach for two weeks to tape and complete the competition, a 32-team tournament. The tournament winner can claim the Giant Nut trophy and bragging rights among robotic designers and engineers.įor the show to go on, BattleBots' creators adapted the latest competition to follow health protocols with regular virus testing and without a live audience. BattleBots brought combat robotics into the pop-culture discussion with televised tournaments that feature 110kg (250lb) robots battling one-on-one to destroy or disable opponents in violent three-minute bouts. In the downtime, Schultz retreated to his workshop in South Windsor, Conn., and used the opportunity to make Mouser’s ‘bot an even more effective fighting force.īattleBots and Huge returned to television in December. The season was shelved until further notice.įor Schultz and his team, it meant continued work on Huge, sponsored by Mouser and TTI Inc., until the competition’s safety protocols could be worked out.
Then, concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic put everything on hold. “Things were pretty tight at the time and pretty close to done,” Schultz says. The Discovery Channel had again booked the Long Beach, Calif., warehouse for two weeks of production before hundreds of adoring robotic combat fans. Hardware engineer Jonathan Schultz had Mouser Electronics’ entry into the nationally televised BattleBots competition all ready to do battle against other remote-controlled robots back in February.