Outside of the Box

It is finally that time of the year for Ashley and I to get together and recognize so many amazing people in the combat robotics community. Hear us work through all of the categories and talk about each of the nominees one by one. Voting will run through December 4th so make sure to vote for your favorites! You can cast your votes here: https://forms.gle/TEcgKNDi9E64YF6g7 

I had the absolute pleasure of talking to Michael Perl who is a multi-talented entrepreneur and President of the Grant Imahara STEAM Foundation. He talks about how he got his start in music and then video games where he developed his own game studio and eventually got connected with the Foundation. We talked about the STEAM Star program which features influencers talking about their experiences as well as their Bot Battles program - both of which are completely free. You can check out their programs on https://www.grantimaharafoundation.org/ and botbattles.org.

The October NHRL event was full of tricks and treats including a great run from Drumder Child, an impressive showing from Minor Threat 5 and Golden Dumpsters for Slam Plan and ARES. In this episode, I talk to Nate Franklin about going up against strong competition in his bracket fights, then chatted with Luke Grell about his hard-hitting, veteran robot. Brendan Steele aka Business Cat also makes a bold prediction about his chances at the December Finals and the ARES crew at MIT talks about rebuilding their combat robotics program and about that thrilling win over WarHard XXL!

It has been a little while since I have done a true roundtable and you certainly won't want to miss this one, which features a number of the qualified competitors for the upcoming MRCA Finals event on November 9th. They each talked about their robots and the journey to finals this year. I also asked each of them who they think will win the competition and how they feel about the rapid growth of the league.

Check out some of the competitors channels: https://youtube.com/@kiron_robotics_real?si=gJC6IqXE__Xc1IKs  https://www.youtube.com/@UCQ-og4JhU9oA8sUF5J0HeIg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLuQ7paA56Q6QX0vBTx6zeg

We're back with the epic conclusion of Dungeons & Robots! J joins us for this final session as all of our characters try and make sense of the chaos and killer robots in our post-apocalyptic world. Will they be able to save this world? What other robots might creep up and challenge our heroes? Will mini Jake indeed survive until the end? All of these questions will be answered in this episode! Thank you so much to all of the players for such a fun game!

It is almost time for NHRL's final qualifying event of 2024 and I was joined by a handful of builders to chat about it. I talked to Jeff Waters about his new 30lb entry Pocket Aces plus his fiery upgrades to Supreme Ruler, had a spirited Pokemon discussion with Jaaron, Zoe & David about their Pokemon-themed robots and finally talked to Dima of Turbofiend and Tom of Pawsitively Hissterical about coming into October with a competitive mindset. This is a fun episode you won't want to miss!

We've got a fun recap for you today featuring NHRL builders in all weight classes to break down this exciting event for them! I talked to Julian of Mako, Beckett & Matthew of Dimachaerus and Donald and Corey of Team Pandamonium about how their respective tournaments went, what they thought of some of the other competitors at the event and what their thoughts are ahead of Finals as Julian, Beckett and Corey qualified at this event. As usual, it is a great time with great builders!

I promise this is an episode you will not want to miss as I got to chat with BattleBots co-founder Trey Roski! We kick off with a full backstage tour of the BattleBots arena as the teams prepare for Week 2 of FaceOffs including a view of Malice in the BattleBox and the rest of the teams working on their bots backstage. This is followed by an amazing discussion with Trey about the real story behind the leaked email regarding Destruct-A-Thon, the possibility of having 30 and 60lb robots in the BattleBox and much more!

**Recommend to watch the video version on the YouTube channel for the best experience with this episode!

#battlebots #combatrobotics

We're back with Casey Jeremiason of MRCA as they approach the end of their season with a lead up to Finals. We chatted about how the season has gone so far including the incredible growth that the MRCA community has seen over the past year. Casey also dropped names of some bots who are currently at the top of the MRCA rankings and are expected to qualify for finals while also elaborating on the reason behind their qualifying process. Check it out right here!

BattleBots is BACK - this time for Fall FaceOffs which will be airing on YouTube at a later time! I spoke to Alex Price of Team Horizon about their new robot Calypso that is setting out to control the competition. We chatted about this new design from builder Josh Kong as well as how Price felt they might fare against their opponents for FaceOffs - Skorpios, MadCatter and RoundHouse. For those who have been missing 250 lb carnage - check out this episode and get hyped for the future of BattleBots!