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Designing a Combat Robot for the Discovery Channel’s BattleBots

The Discovery Channel’s BattleBots turns engineering into an extreme sport that attracts an audience of over 3 million kids and families worldwide. As one of the only shows spotlighting real engineers and their creations, BattleBots challenges competitors to think creatively and build the most destructive robot.

We built our robot Valkyrie as a fierce competitor designed to put on a great show! Since our team’s inception, we have participated in the 2018, 2019, and 2020 seasons of BattleBots, learning, iterating, and improving season after season.

Valkyrie holds an 8:4 record from the 2018 and 2019 seasons of the show, placing in the top 20 for two seasons running. See us compete in the 2020 Season on the Discovery Channel on Thursdays at 8PM.

The Challenge

Design a fierce robot for BattleBots that can adapt to the many different opponents in the competition. But most of all, put on a great show to inspire millions of kids interested in STEM fields.

The Solution

Valkyrie, a sleek, low-profile spaceship-themed undercutter robot with modular armor and internal systems that are easy to repair and upgrade.

The 2020 team with our latest version of Valkyrie.

Valkyrie’s Evolution

Initial Concept

We sought to build a robot with an iconic appearance instantly recognizable to fans. Our initial design concept was a sleek, powerful, and stealthy undercutter-style robot.

We chose the name Valkyrie when we drew this initial sketch - and our vision materialized into a stealth-bomber themed robot that fans now know and love!

Prototyping

A year before entering on BattleBots, we prototyped our ideas and aesthetic with smaller fighting robots to validate the undercutter weapon concept before taking the design to 250 lbs.

Engineering

Facing off against robots of various shapes and sizes, we never fully know what to expect until it happens. We designed the system with two engineering goals: adaptability and ease-of-maintenance.

Valkyrie has configurable armor panels and weapons to adapt to many different weapon types, and we designed the system to make drop-in repairs and upgrades quick and easy at the event.

Valkyrie’s “vertical spinner” opponent configuration with durable UHMW wheel guards and a bar-style blade.

Iteration

After every single fight, win or lose, we learn something. We document what went wrong and sometimes design and fabricate upgrades mid-season. We constantly iterate, test, and improve Valkyrie fight-after-fight, and year-over-year to boost performance, power, and appeal.

A small, but critical improvement we made after a fight that keeps our frame from flexing into our drive motors.

Featured Work

Here are some of the specific aspects of Valkyrie I worked on over the last three seasons:

Generatively Designed Frame Rails

BattleBots has a strict 250lb limit. We try to put as much of that into our armor and weapon system as we can, while still having a robust chassis. I used Generative Design to optimize the strength of each of our six frame rails while reducing their weight from previous seasons by over 30%.

Design

The core concept of generative design involves creating your “preserve” bodies that must remain a part of the design, and “obstacles” that the design cannot grow into. After inputting expected loads and magnitudes calculated based on the energy in our own weapon, the program grows an optimized structure to support those loading conditions.

Fabrication

While the rails were beautiful and functional, we wanted to make sure they were still relatively easy to fabricate. We set up the Generative Design study to account for the 3-axis machine and tools we planned to mill them on.

Benefits

We cut 30% of the weight of all six frame rails we redesigned while maintaining their effective strength. This gave us more weight back that we could apply to other parts of the system needing reinforcement, like our weapon motor casing that had failed the season before.

Configurability & Maintenance

One of our core design goals was to make Valkyrie configurable to the breadth of opponents we might face in the BattleBox. Along with a few different weapon options, Valkyrie has multiple styles, materials, and thicknesses of armor panels that we reconfigure before every fight. This allows us to optimize our armor configuration for our opponents while keeping below the 250lb weight limit.

System Redundancy & Accessibility

Once the top and rear armor comes off, every part of Valkyrie is accessible for maintenance. We have multiple redundancies built in, like isolated electrical systems, so that if one battery or connector fails, the robot can still partially operate.

Modularity & Maintenance

Each subsystem of the robot is a module that can be easily removed and replaced after a fight, or upgraded between seasons.

Adaptability

We make each armor panel out of titanium, aluminum, and steel of different thicknesses that we mix and match before every fight. This means we can strengthen specific areas based on our opponent, all while meeting the 250lb weight limit.

Style & Branding

For the 2020 season we wanted to match the internal upgrades we made with a new look to make Valkyrie feel even more rugged, powerful, and sleek. I designed 3D printed “greebles” on top of the flat armor plating to give Valkyrie more texture and personality. We also paint Valkyrie with a blue undercoat to give the impression of “scarring” when we get hit.

Outreach

For our team, BattleBots is so much more than just robotics. The show draws in nearly 3 million viewers per episode, most of them families and children. As one of the only teams led by a woman on the show, we use BattleBots as a platform to inspire a diverse audience to pursue STEM fields. I organized and coordinated multiple events with Boston Children’s Museum and Artisan’s Asylum to host workshops, give talks, and share in the fun of robot creation.

Workshop with the Boston Children’s Museum

Giving a young superfan an up-close look!

Videos

Using Markforged parts on Valkyrie:

One of my favorite fights of 2020:

Don’t forget to catch us on the Discovery Channel on Thursdays at 8PM!