Why I support and all girls robotics team.

Why I support an All Girls Robotics team 


Back in  2019 I was working for Caterpillar and I was asked if I’d talk to a local robotics team, they put me in touch with a lady named Shannon who ran an all girls FLL team out of her garage. 


I went to see them a few times and helped them just a tiny bit along the way before those girls aged out and moved on to high school. Jump forward a little bit and Shannon asked if I’d go speak to a new team some of those girls were on at a local high school. Those girls were now on a huge FRC team with a better workspace than I had for my Battlebots. It was great to see them moved on but it was clear they were swamped by such a big team. The girls I’d seen working so hard on FLL were getting lost in the FRC team. It was disappointing to see but at the time I was just glad to see them still competing. 


Not long after Shannon reached out and asked if I’d have lunch with her and their FLL coach Leigh. We sat down and she told me she wanted to start a new team and wanted to have me be a mentor and help them along the way. I’d seen them be swamped in the other team, I knew they could do more than they were being allowed to in their other team. It took just two hot dogs and a coke, I said yes to coming aboard to help. 


The way I justified it initially was knowing that worldwide, women make up around 9% of engineers. I can count on one hand the amount of female engineers I’ve worked with. I know you can’t make a change if you sit on the sofa and complain about it. You need to do something. So joining G-Force Robotics was how I was going to help change that. Little by little I was hoping to inspire or coach some of the girls into an engineering field. 


The Girls team officially started at a time in my life where I’d become disillusioned with what I was doing. I was struggling to enjoy what I was doing with robots, my hunger for competition was waning and I was starting to think about walking away for a while. Then I met 12 girls who light up my world. 

My very first day was showing them how to use a soldering iron, which if you know me and my robots you know it's not something I’m good at so it was a little blind leading the blind but we all struggled through it, next it was showing them how to use the drill press, the mitre saw, basic hand tools from wrenches and socket wrenches to hacksaws and how to use clamps. It was really basic stuff, stuff I’d forgotten that other people didn’t know but they took to it like ducks to water. I had forgotten that people at their age are sponges for information, if you want to learn you pick it up fast, they wanted to learn and very quickly I went from saying “this is how you do this” to, “do you need help to do that?” to hearing “get out of the way Craig I got this” 


Their ability to absorb information was astounding, they went from not knowing how to do basic things to helping each other doing them in a faster time than I did at that age. They would look out for each other and help each other. They went from learning the basics to assembling a robot for their first off season competition, which unfortunately fell on the first weekend of Battlebots Championship 7 filming. 


I sat in the pits for the first 2 days of filming slowly getting Slammo ready to compete and spending the majority of my time texting Leigh and Shannon for updates on how they were doing. They broke something, they fixed it, they scored X points, they need to do this so they can move on, they can do this so they can do this. Time I should have been spending on Slammo got spent checking in and seeing how they were doing. Late on the second day I got the news that they had won! I was elated but then I had to get Slammo through safety (which we did shortly after) 


I came back to a group of girls bouncing with energy and excitement for the future, it was infectious! They made a robot, broke it, fixed it and won. They were inspirational, they made me want to do better, they made me want to work harder. Visiting them twice a week was the best, every time we got together we did more, we learnt more, we achieved more. Christmas came along and I almost didn’t want to take a break. I wanted to keep making robots with them. They were awesome. 


On a purely selfish level, being their mentor makes me happy. They’re an amazing group of girls they can achieve so much and I’m so proud to be a part of it. I don’t know how many if any of them will take up engineering roles, some of them could walk into engineering roles right now let alone in a few years after First and after college. Their rate of knowledge growth is outstanding, the girls on the coding side have totally eclipsed me with their ability. The assembly team could easily take on a Battlebot project. The drivers are probably better than I am now, I certainly can’t drive their robot but I feel certain they could drive mine, to the same level I can but probably better. Is that because they have better reaction times than a man in his late 30s probably but we won't talk about that. 


Every single time I work with them, I feel better about the world, even on the harder days and the days when we don’t achieve as much as we want to. And the days when we do a lot, and achieve what we wanted to or more, those days are the best. I don’t know if my goal of guiding them into engineering is working, but I see how they are inspiring other girls, I see how they are inspiring themselves, and I have hope. I believe in them, they are the best. That is why I work with them. They make me feel like a better person as a result and I respect them all. 


https://swe.org/research/2023/employment/#:~:text=The%20percentage%20of%20female%20engineers,information%20research%20scientists%20are%20women.


https://www.firstlegoleague.org/


https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc


https://gforcerobotics.com/


A love letter to Robot Combat

I am a maker, I love making things, I always have. From the moment I found out that the dinosaurs in Jurassic park were animatronic I wanted to make robots. That blew my mind and made me want to make a robot dinosaur. From the age of about 9 (I guess) I started making little robots out of motors, gearboxes, lego and a lot of cardboard, A LOT of cardboard.

It was no surprise to anyone that knew me that upon seeing robots fighting each other I was hooked. My eyes bulged and my jaw hit the floor. I was in awe at the sight before me, which was La Machine whomping everything in sight, And the Master swinging its saw around and chopping everything up. I was all in, I went and screwed an army helmet to an RC car and strapped a drill on top and called it Drill Sergeant and I was ready to go.

That feeling from when I first saw robots fighting on VHS at my after school engineering club has never left me, I love watching robot combat. Whether it's 150g robots at an AWS or heavyweights at RoboGames I love them all, I still get that giddy feeling of awe. The sight of two machines made by two teams engaging in all out war for 3 minutes is a sight I will always be in love with.

At its core Robot Combat is an engineering challenge disguised as a robot combat event. It's your idea versus someone else's idea, it's your engineering against someone else’s engineering. It’s the fucking best!

The first event that captured my imagination was Robot Wars. I was in an afternoon school club when mentorn reached out to schools and asked them for entries for the debut season on BBC 2. I sat and watched La Machine smash the ever living shit out of everything in its path at a London live event. This set me off on a path of STEM and pitched me into the stratosphere of engineering. We missed out on the first season of Robot Wars UK because my school was a short sighted POS. We had a robot ready for the 2nd season and we loved every single second of the build and being in and around other robots. The events were huge complex machines with vast fields and some of the most impressive battles we’d seen at the time. Series 5 was my favourite. We sat and watched Bigger Brother beat Hypnodisc then the all hands on deck repair that Bigger Brother got over night to then face Razer for the title. The pits were the heart and soul of the sport then as much as it is now.

The camaraderie from Robot Wars set up the live scene, a decade plus long sportsman event series with a smattering of full combat events along the way. Roaming Robots, RoboChallenge and Robots Live kept the sport alive post Robot Wars, this period of robot combat was probably my favourite. No pressure, regular events, good friends and terrific fights. Man, fighting Terrorhurtz one weekend in Kettering was one of my best weekends. I wanted to know if I could hang with him (I couldn’t but I gave it my best) We shattered his hammer and shoved him around before losing drive on one wheel. It was a time we could experiment with new things and take our time to get them working. A lot of the things we run today are based on what we learnt back then.

My absolute favourite single event was and we likely always will be RoboGames. I had a burning desire to win a medal at RoboGames. Some of the greatest battles the sport has ever seen happened here, Sewer Snake vs Ziggo, Last Rites vs Electric Boogaloo, Megabyte vs Biohazard, Touro Maximus vs Last Rites, Original Sin vs Anyone! Oh and Raging Scotsman! THE flame bot oh man what a robot, what an event. It was always the most fun event, several people from this event came to my wedding. RoboGames may be done and gone but modern Battlebots owes its legendary robots to RoboGames without this event we wouldn't have this incredible sport where it is now.

And Battlebots, this is where I always wanted the sport to go. An almost professional level of sport with some of the best teams in the world competing at the very highest level. I love the fight night style to tournament. I am so proud to have made it to the tournament. It's a real achievement for me, one I hope to repeat this year. The fighting is intense, The pits are in tents, The showmanship is top notch, the talent is the best we’ve ever had (love you Chris and Kenny) and I’ve added even more friends to my collection of nerds from Battlebots.

For all of the stress this sport has caused me it never ever ceases to create that sense of awe and wonder. The greatest compliment you can give someone in this sport is “I love your robot! I wanna fight it!” That sums up this sport. I can sit in a bar with Ray and Justin Billings and drink and chat shit and then go fight them the next day and be outside using Ray's welder to put my robot back together.

I will happily take the stress, the heartache and failures as a form of penance for being a part of this incredible sport and its sensational community. A community built by TV shows originally, kept alive by live events and a passion for the sport, to its return to TV. Everything about this sport, the highs and lows, is incredible. I love every minute of it.

Mental health

Where to begin, mental health is not a subject I deal with not one I think many people would expect me to write a blog post about but here goes.

I have forced myself to stop building for the next season of Battlebots. Ive taken time away since probably mid December. My parents came to visit for Christmas, like many expat families I hadn't seen them since before the pandemic and zoom, Whatsapp and portal can only do so much to elevate the pain of missing your family. I spent time with my wife, the entire reason for me being in America. I made things that were not Battlebots for the first time in years. I made a puppet! A replica of The Professor from puppet history (go watch it it's the best) and I delved into Warhammer 40,000 for the first time in over a decade.

The simple joy of making things knowing they were entirely for me, knowing they won't be destroyed in a matter of minutes in front of millions of people, knowing that I can enjoy them for as long as I want to was the greatest relief in making things that I have felt in years.

People often ask “how does it feel to see thousands of dollars worth of Battlebot get destroyed” and the simple response is I don't feel anything. Not anymore. There's no love for what I make, that goes in the Battlebox.

The bots are made on a production line of parts over weeks and weeks and I feel nothing for them anymore not since Foxic mk3.

I poured my heart and soul into making Foxic, the robot brought me joy and near bankruptcy to build. Days and days of grinding and welding to keeping and tweaking for it to be remembered by most as “it's shit”

I know it didn't do what it should have done on the TV show, but given time and energy it won a lot of fights and it was extremely fun to work on and drive.

Predator, Hyena, Foxtrot, SlamMow and Slammo don't feel the same, they've become monolithic a means to an end. The new Slammo doesn't break that mould. After filming ended September 3rd I made a point of striking while the iron was hot and designed a robot based on what I think we need to build to win Battlebots as a control bot. I designed the robot in about 2 weeks and about 4 weeks later we had the robot mostly together with the intention of getting it to Robot Ruckus but sadly a laser cutting company made the parts for the weapon gearbox wrong and we had to put it back a few weeks. Mid November we had Slammo 22 running and iterated on to a B spec already. It's going to be great but I needed a break from building it. I had to stop for a while and not do Slammo.

In 09 I was at my lowest point, the lowest I have ever felt. Robot Combat was what I used to get me out of that hole, depression took me down a dark path but I carried on not letting depression win. I gave myself targets within robot Combat, this is what I wanted to achieve it's what drove me forward. It's what got me out of bed and up everyday, it's what made me put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward.

When I'm asked “what does robot combat mean to me?” Or “what does it mean to do well at Battlebots” (Chris Rose asked me this at filming 2020) the answer is everything. It means everything to me because robot combat gave me everything I have. It gave me hope and it gave me reason. It gave me something to fight for and it gave me something to work towards. It's corny and cheesy I know but robot combat saved my life.

When your depressed and you can't see away out finding yourself a light in the darkness means a great deal. For me robot combat was that light. Battlebots was always the goal. I want to win every fight, I want to be the champion. I know I can be, I know I can't do it alone and that's why I have my friends on my team.

But at the same time I've reached a point where robot combat isn't the most important thing in my life now. My break has shown me I can be happy making none robot combat things. So now Battlebots is something else to me. What I can't exactly explain. It still matters to me and would be one of my proudest achievements I still have a burning desire to win it all but I can't deal with the mental burn out I get every year with Battlebots.

A pandemic of robot building

Sooooooo…. its been a while, I’ve been busy. Mostly dodging people but also working.

My day job never shut down, we didn’t get the stimulus for small businesses so we carried on doing our day job. With filming being pushed back to October I found myself at a lot of loose ends looking for something to do. I had no idea where I would end up or what I would end up doing but the initial bug for my challenge bot died off, pretty quickly once it was done.
A lot of work went into the challenge bot but it inevitably was pretty useless and ended up under the welding table and literally collecting dust, mostly from the welding table above it. You’ll get to see a video of it doing something at some point, it did achieve its goal of proving anything with enough will power can become a Battlebot.

I went SlamMow crazy….. I have so many weapon set ups for SlamMow its a bit of a problem. I now have 36 weapon combinations and with a bit of additional variety I could do even more. I built 3 complete chassis all working all ready to go. I did a bunch of videos of it testing, even went viral on TikTok with one of them. They all need repainting because I’ve literally been throwing them off the back of a truck to check their durability, videos to follow…

I put Predator back together and got covered in oil because fuck hydraulics.

I started rebuilding Foxic, put a hydraulic weapon system in because I never learn, dropped the robot to 24v again from 48v and stripped the useful parts off Foxtrot to make Foxic work again.

Foxtrot will be a coffee table, once its cleaned and polished it’ll take pride of place in my bonus room, once I figure out how to take a 250lbs robot up a flight of stairs.

I started on 2 new bots a Blendo clone and a hammer bot made from drill motors and trailer mud guards. These bots were for my own robot combat series I had planned for YouTube. I was going to do a bracket and fight my own robots and I still will but not right now. Right now we have to get ready for what might happen with Battlebots.

We were announced back in March/April as being on the show and since then the dates have changed 6+ times, and we genuinely thought 2 weeks ago we wouldn’t get to play. So much so that I bought the stuff to make my arena for my Backyard bots event. But now its back on and we’re ready for when the box finally opens again and I cannot fucking wait

Also I made some tables for the workshop

Battlebots is a job you don't get paid for

I have a regular job, I work 8:30 to 5 Monday to Friday, then I get home, I eat, I start my real job.


Build season for some is only in the run up to the event perhaps some planning before hand but for me, 2020 season of Battlebots started the day I shipped the robot to 2019 filming. That was when my tentative plans for 2020 started. I knew I wanted a grab lift set up, I thought at the time about how I could incorporate that in to Foxtrot but as the season played out, I opted to design something new. At filming the robot had the name Rampage and was very much the same outline that became SlamMow.
I spent a good deal of time in the pits when the robot wasn’t being worked on designing the new robot, asking advice from fellow builders whose own bots had an element I wanted to replicate in the new idea. The Vasquez family showed me how their lifter worked, Paul Ventimiglia showed me his drive set up and Jim Yeh talked me through his flame system.


By the time filming had ended I had a full model of the robot and the fine details were all I needed to do before puling the trigger and starting. Within a week of being home from filming I was sending out for quotes for the new robots laser cutting. Finally settling on one and getting the money together to order what would become chassis 1. At this point I’m putting in a couple of ours an evening and a couple of hours on the weekend.
The first chassis slowly comes together over the course of a month or two, parts coming in dribs and drabs and slowly but surely a robot emerges from the pile of parts. Then the serious build starts as an impending live event in Florida, a chance to prove its capable and find flaws in the design. The first rush build begins, couple of hours here and there become solid build days 8 hours of work 4-6 hours a night, 12-14 hours Saturday, 10-12 hours on Sunday same again until the robot is ready to run in Orlando.

A fun weekend later and a long drive back its back to a couple of hours here and there to strip the robot and then a solid weekend of checking welds, checking soldered joints finding where I cut the corners and to fix those issues. A long weekend later and the robot is back together and working for display.

Next build schedule is chassis 2, and the challenge to replicate build 1 without the mistakes and without cutting corners. Test and retest, repeat, then test and retest and so on and so on, each time learning more and more about the machine and what its failings are. By now the couple of hours here and there in the evening have become a regular 4-5 hours after a day at work.
Time to strip the robot, design some more parts and get the robot battle hardened for a show we don’t know were in yet. Build it anyway buy more parts design more parts hope you get in and you can justify the expenditure, 5 hours Monday to Friday after work is now more common than not, 8 hours a day Saturday and Sunday is the norm. Get the call, we’re in! time to ramp up the builds.

By now we’re building chassis 3 and more weapons, redoing the wiring, battle hardening the battle hardened parts. Monday to Thursday 5-6 hours, Friday is more like 8-10 hours with an early finish. Saturday and Sunday are 12-14 hours each. We’re now a month out from shipping and at this point I’m doing 40 hours of my regular job and (conservatively) doing 44 hours on the robot a week.

That was 2 weeks ago, and I have one robot ready with one more basically ready, More parts are on their way with 12 days until ship day, and, for me at least, the end of the season. Time on the robot is now more than the time I sleep and more than I spend at work. My only break will come when the crate leaves and my longest period of the year from when I first conceived the robot to fighting that robot at Battlebots of 11 days begins. That is both the end of the season and the start of 2021 build.

This is not a complaint, I love what I do, I love the challenge of what we do. This is a reality check on what I’ve actually gone through for building robots, what I have done this year to try and make a robot that wins. I do this because out of my own garage, with the tools I have at hand, a welder, a grinder, drill and a decent design package. I’ve done as much as I can and I’ve worked harder than ever. Time will tell if it was worth it, god I hope it is.

First Challenge Video

So I'm starting my YouTube channel, and I'm doing 3 series, Battlebots Dissected (where is talk through, mostly my own fights and those fights that create talking points) a series called Combat Robots 101, where I'll do an ground up intro into what goes into building a robot. And finally a series of challenge videos.

My first challenge video goes up Thursday and I'm trying a bunch of scrap fitness equipment. Plan is to finish the challenge then do Foxtrot's fights and then predators. Just trying to keep busy until we know about Battlebots then it'll be all hands on deck.

Like share and subscribe my YouTube channel (link is up there somewhere ☝🏻) to stay up to date with the series and the builds. I'll dona write up for each episode as I go.

Craig