SPEAKER_1: Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.
SPEAKER_1: StarTalk begins right now.
SPEAKER_1: This is StarTalk Sports Edition.
SPEAKER_1: Today, I think we're going to settle on the title of Killer Bots.
SPEAKER_1: I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I've got with me Gary Riley.
SPEAKER_1: O'Reilly, excuse me.
SPEAKER_2: Hey, Neil.
SPEAKER_2: Yes, that's fine.
SPEAKER_1: Gary of O'Reilly.
SPEAKER_2: Hi, Neil.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, Gary.
SPEAKER_2: Yes, we are.
SPEAKER_2: We are very much a tribal.
SPEAKER_1: Former soccer pro and former professional sports commentator, but we've got you now.
SPEAKER_1: You are ours.
SPEAKER_1: And we got Chuck Nice.
SPEAKER_1: Chuck it, baby.
SPEAKER_3: Affirmative.
SPEAKER_1: These are robots before they had full vocabularies and they learned the word yes.
SPEAKER_3: Yes, exactly.
SPEAKER_3: That's how you know it's a robot when it's just so formal that no...
SPEAKER_1: No, no, when it's a robot from 50 years ago.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah.
SPEAKER_1: Robots with like affirmative.
SPEAKER_1: Just say yes, dude.
SPEAKER_1: We're fine.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah.
SPEAKER_1: And why give me four syllables when one will do?
SPEAKER_1: Just saying.
SPEAKER_1: So just remind people that you don't have to go far back to remember that there was a hit TV series called BattleBots.
SPEAKER_1: I remember it.
SPEAKER_1: I watched it.
SPEAKER_1: It came on late at night.
SPEAKER_1: And it was basically, you know, 21st century version of jousting, maybe, but without the blood.
SPEAKER_1: Gladiators.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, gladiators, you know, but without the blood and the trumpets and the, you know, without all the pomp and circumstance.
SPEAKER_1: And plus, it was a geek haven, right?
SPEAKER_1: So if Keeks lived in ancient Rome, they would compete the bots against each other.
SPEAKER_3: Of course they would.
SPEAKER_3: Because otherwise they would have been the ones dying.
SPEAKER_1: We want to know, like, if you are a bot, are you your weapon or do you choose a weapon and wield it as a bot?
SPEAKER_1: And do you know the weaknesses of the other bots?
SPEAKER_1: Do you know that in advance or do you find them?
SPEAKER_1: And none of us have any such expertise, but of course our crack team of researchers and producers found the one guy in the universe, or at least the sector of the universe, who knows what's going on here.
SPEAKER_1: He's the real deal.
SPEAKER_1: Call him a robot warrior.
SPEAKER_1: His name is Ray Billings.
SPEAKER_1: Ray, welcome to StarTalk.
SPEAKER_5: Hey, I'm glad to be here.
SPEAKER_5: Glad to be here.
SPEAKER_5: I'm glad that I'd be part of it.
SPEAKER_1: Man, so, are you real, Ray?
SPEAKER_3: Are you a real person?
SPEAKER_5: I am in fact a real person.
SPEAKER_5: Good person or not is another thing.
SPEAKER_5: But yes, I'm a real person.
SPEAKER_2: Take the window that says, are you a robot?
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, if we say, are you good with this?
SPEAKER_1: And he says, affirmative, you know, then we'll question.
SPEAKER_5: Yeah, but you've given me the out now.
SPEAKER_5: I just have to say yes, and we're good.
SPEAKER_5: So, you know, it's okay.
SPEAKER_3: So, you're a learning robot.
SPEAKER_5: I can fool you.
SPEAKER_1: And Ray, you're creator of one of the most successful and feared combat bots ever, called Tombstone.
SPEAKER_3: That's a little one of those.
SPEAKER_5: It's the only BattleBot robot that has won championships in two separate weight categories.
SPEAKER_5: Oh, weight categories.
SPEAKER_1: So, your division was what?
SPEAKER_5: Heavyweight?
SPEAKER_5: Right now, it's competing as a heavyweight, but I had built it originally as a super heavyweight.
SPEAKER_5: So, it has won championships in both weight categories.
SPEAKER_3: And what is the weight for it?
SPEAKER_3: Like, is that a super, like, refrigerator?
SPEAKER_3: Is that a super heavyweight?
SPEAKER_5: They've ran a multitude of weights throughout the years.
SPEAKER_5: Some of them are very light, all the way down to eight ounces, half a pound.
SPEAKER_4: Oh, snap!
SPEAKER_5: The ones you see on television are much larger.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, I'm pretty sure I can kick the ass of an eight-ounce robot.
SPEAKER_5: You might think that.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, me plus a baseball bat.
SPEAKER_5: The small ones are actually really vicious.
SPEAKER_5: So like a one-pound combat robot will lock your hand off, really.
SPEAKER_5: Oh, snap!
SPEAKER_5: They're very, very powerful.
SPEAKER_5: The ones you see on TV are much larger.
SPEAKER_5: So the current weight category that you watch on the BattleBots show is 250 pounds.
SPEAKER_5: Oh, that's not so much I weigh.
SPEAKER_5: Yeah, they've gone up to super heavy.
SPEAKER_5: It was 320 pounds.
SPEAKER_1: So let me just get your background fully out here.
SPEAKER_1: So you're a founder of Hardcore Robotics.
SPEAKER_5: Correct.
SPEAKER_1: That's my team name.
SPEAKER_1: And you develop combat robots named Last Rites and Darkness and hundreds of other combat robots.
SPEAKER_1: It sounds like you are just evil.
SPEAKER_5: Well, there's a hulk of the Internet that would agree with you on that.
SPEAKER_5: So I've got some interesting fan mail over the years.
SPEAKER_5: Let me tell you.
SPEAKER_1: And you've been called the king of kinetic energy.
SPEAKER_1: I like that.
SPEAKER_1: Throwing down the physics.
SPEAKER_1: So let me tell you, if you want to talk about physics, tell me, other than smash smash, like the Hulk, what kind of physics and engineering goes into your thinking when you design a kick-ass robot?
SPEAKER_5: Well, okay, so the first thing is, the matches themselves are three minutes long.
SPEAKER_5: So your duty cycle...
SPEAKER_1: Is there any good boxing match?
SPEAKER_5: Yeah, your duty cycle is very short.
SPEAKER_5: So there are things you would do engineering-wise.
SPEAKER_1: Tell everybody what a duty cycle is, please.
SPEAKER_3: I was going to say, please tell them before I do.
SPEAKER_3: Please tell them what a duty cycle is before I do.
SPEAKER_5: So if you design a car, okay?
SPEAKER_5: I mean, it has to run for decades.
SPEAKER_5: You're going to get in and drive it all over town.
SPEAKER_5: Its duty cycle is very long.
SPEAKER_5: A powered door or something.
SPEAKER_5: You want to be able to open and close that door all day long.
SPEAKER_5: Its duty cycle is virtually continuous.
SPEAKER_5: For a combat robot, it's three minutes.
SPEAKER_5: So three minutes and five seconds, if that thing sets itself on fire, I don't care because all it has to do is survive for that three minutes.
SPEAKER_5: So your engineering thoughts are different because you're going to push things to their absolute limit because it only has to run long enough to kill the other robot.
SPEAKER_5: That's all the longer it has to function.
SPEAKER_5: Wow.
SPEAKER_1: How do you know if you kill the other robot?
SPEAKER_1: So where do you go for your uncle?
SPEAKER_1: Does it tap out?
SPEAKER_1: Does it go in the towel?
SPEAKER_5: Alright, so.
SPEAKER_1: Listen, if Chuck's watched too many movies, damn, I used to think that was a good thing, but not any longer, Chuck.
SPEAKER_5: In general, a lot of the non-televised events, you can tap out.
SPEAKER_5: You start getting your butt kicked royally.
SPEAKER_5: You can say, hey, I'm done.
SPEAKER_5: You can wave the white flag.
SPEAKER_5: BattleBots, because it's a television show, they won't let you tap out.
SPEAKER_5: So if the other guy wants to keep wailing on you and you're dead, they want an exciting show.
SPEAKER_5: They want something that provides entertainment as well.
SPEAKER_1: So tell me how you think about the engineering and the physics of what's going on.
SPEAKER_1: If you're dubbed king of kinetic energy, that tells me that you put some physics into this.
SPEAKER_5: Yeah, quite a bit.
SPEAKER_5: So if you've seen a picture of Tombstone, there's a horizontal bar that spins in front that uses the weapon to attack the other robot.
SPEAKER_5: And so you try to spin it as fast as you can, but then there's lots of things you have to consider.
SPEAKER_5: As it's spinning around, if you're spinning fast enough, you won't get engagement.
SPEAKER_5: You'll actually just start grinding away rather than hitting, which is what I want to do is transfer my kinetic energy into the other robot.
SPEAKER_5: So then you've got to figure out, okay, so if it's spinning at 3000 RPM, how much engagement can I get at depth on that tooth when it hits the other robot?
SPEAKER_5: And so then you figure out how fast the other guy is, how fast you are, see, make sure you can get enough engagement to actually tear parts off, which is what I'm after.
SPEAKER_5: I'm trying to pull material off the other robot.
SPEAKER_1: Dismember.
SPEAKER_1: Oh, pull material off.
SPEAKER_1: That's dismemberment in battle.
SPEAKER_5: Affirmative.
SPEAKER_2: So where do you go, Ray?
SPEAKER_2: Where do you go?
SPEAKER_2: Don't start.
SPEAKER_2: You'll only encourage him.
SPEAKER_2: Where do you go to generate this energy?
SPEAKER_2: Because, I mean, we could line up a whole load of batteries we could buy in any hardware store, but you've got something else going for sure.
SPEAKER_5: Battery technology has changed a lot over the last few years.
SPEAKER_5: So when I first started, we were using lead-acid batteries like we used to start your car.
SPEAKER_5: And they're big, they're heavy, they actually fall in their face when you're trying to source a lot of amps out of them.
SPEAKER_5: So over the years, then we've moved to other chemistry.
SPEAKER_5: So nickel cadmium, nickel metal hydride, various lithium chemistries now.
SPEAKER_5: So lithium polymers right now are incredibly power-dense.
SPEAKER_5: And so you can get a lot of power out of a fairly confined space.
SPEAKER_5: So all of the power system for the robot is self-contained.
SPEAKER_5: It's all on board.
SPEAKER_5: And it's significant.
SPEAKER_5: So when the weapon is spinning up, the weapon motor will draw about 1800 amps at almost 60 volts.
SPEAKER_5: So briefly, in that initial spin up, it's 70, 80 kilowatts, something like that.
SPEAKER_5: So it's an incredible amount of power.
SPEAKER_1: I just realized that a big fraction of your robot's weight would be the battery.
SPEAKER_5: You would think so.
SPEAKER_5: It's probably 16, 17 pounds.
SPEAKER_5: Yeah.
SPEAKER_5: They can't source that for very long or they'll go up in flames.
SPEAKER_5: So you've got to have the ability to source that current up front.
SPEAKER_5: But I don't want to waste a bunch of weight on batteries either, because I need armor, I need weapon motors, I need weight elsewhere.
SPEAKER_5: And so you're always right on that razor's edge of, will it run for the full three minutes or not?
SPEAKER_2: So when you've got a 250-pound monster, and let's put this into context.
SPEAKER_2: This is kind of like an NFL linebacker weight that we're talking here.
SPEAKER_2: Where did you go for your material science?
SPEAKER_2: A, for your weaponization, because that thing's got to do some serious damage.
SPEAKER_2: But you've got to stop being damaged.
SPEAKER_2: So it's kind of weaponization plus protection.
SPEAKER_2: So what part of material science did you choose to handle?
SPEAKER_5: We do a lot of continuous material studies every time we throw it in the arena.
SPEAKER_5: So if your job is to design a bridge, and you're going to go through all of the engineering of it, you design this bridge, and you don't find out if you've made a mistake for 10 years, right?
SPEAKER_5: I find out in three minutes.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, that's because you're blowing the bridge up right after you build it.
SPEAKER_2: You're not building any bridge that I want to cross, right?
SPEAKER_2: Just so as you know.
SPEAKER_5: I guarantee it.
SPEAKER_5: If I build a bridge, it's not coming down.
SPEAKER_4: All right.
SPEAKER_1: No, I'm thinking this through, and I'm saying if we all lived in sort of medieval feudal Europe, and we're in a castle with a moat, I want you with us on our scene.
SPEAKER_3: Right.
SPEAKER_1: The marauding knights would not get through Ray's bridges, tunnels, weaponry.
SPEAKER_3: You're the dude that actually came up with the idea of not only a moat, but then actually filling it with tar and then allowing it to set it on fire when somebody comes calling to the castle.
SPEAKER_2: Ray, you're on a horizontal plane with your weapon of choice, right?
SPEAKER_1: Correct.
SPEAKER_2: With your destructive weapon.
SPEAKER_2: But what's the…
SPEAKER_2: I mean, you know you must calculate a lot of things.
SPEAKER_2: So what's the advantage or disadvantage between potential energy and me hammering down on something or me using that kinetic and horizontal energy?
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, that's a good question, right?
SPEAKER_5: There are a lot of things to think about in that regard.
SPEAKER_5: So the reason that I chose a horizontal is I can store more energy and then still be able to drive it.
SPEAKER_5: So a lot of them have a vertical spinner, spin up from the floor.
SPEAKER_5: And when it comes to actual transfer of energy, that's actually better because you're pushing up into the other robot.
SPEAKER_5: Well, that equal and opposite thing is just pushing your robot down towards the floor and the earth underneath it.
SPEAKER_5: You've got just more mass behind you.
SPEAKER_5: You can transfer that energy better.
SPEAKER_5: The problem is that they're turning and driving 90 degrees from the axis that that is spinning in and they're fighting, you know, forces in that regard.
SPEAKER_5: I'm spinning in the same plane that I'm driving and I can drive more freely then because I'm not fighting those forces.
SPEAKER_3: Interesting.
SPEAKER_5: So I can store more energy and I can drive better.
SPEAKER_5: I just have a harder time transferring it than you would if you were spinning vertically instead of horizontally.
SPEAKER_1: So your modern day Leonardo da Vinci, for those who don't know and think of the man only as an artist, he has extensive illustrations of military weaponry totally exploiting physics and engineering of the day.
SPEAKER_1: And I looked at those weapons like, ooh.
SPEAKER_4: He draws them in action.
SPEAKER_1: He's got one that's like tombstone.
SPEAKER_5: He's got one that was driven by horses.
SPEAKER_5: And then there's like a pulley arrangement that swings a big like sword scythe in the front.
SPEAKER_5: They could go through and just cut the legs off of the opponent.
SPEAKER_1: And he drew it.
SPEAKER_1: The man knew how to do human anatomy.
SPEAKER_1: And he drew soldiers on the ground with their legs cut off.
SPEAKER_4: Yes.
SPEAKER_2: He must have been fun at the dinner table.
SPEAKER_5: Oh, I would love to have him in my bar to have a drink with the guy.
SPEAKER_5: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_5: That would have been cool.
SPEAKER_3: He's the guy that invented the pony.
SPEAKER_1: Invented the pony?
SPEAKER_3: What?
SPEAKER_3: Well, they were horses.
SPEAKER_1: Come on, Neil.
SPEAKER_4: Sorry.
SPEAKER_4: I was like half a sentence behind that one.
SPEAKER_1: The pony do have some short ass legs.
SPEAKER_1: All right.
SPEAKER_1: We got to take a quick break and reset this conversation.
SPEAKER_1: With Ray Billings and the TV series BattleBots, we're going to just find out what's making this man tick as well as his boss when StarTalk continues.
SPEAKER_1: Jack, StarTalk, Sports Edition.
SPEAKER_1: We're talking about Killer Bots.
SPEAKER_1: And the one dude who invented more bots that killed other bots than anybody we know this sector of the galaxy, Ray Billings.
SPEAKER_1: Ray Billings from the BattleBots TV series.
SPEAKER_1: Dude, you're scaring me.
SPEAKER_3: The bot mask.
SPEAKER_3: He's a bot mask murderer, that's what it is.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, basically a serial murderer.
SPEAKER_3: His bot, the ripper.
SPEAKER_1: So let me ask you something in terms of strategies, because it's one thing, okay, physics is a strategy, right?
SPEAKER_1: You've got this horizontal spinner.
SPEAKER_1: Other people have smashing things, I get that.
SPEAKER_1: But can you be, what are the rules that might prevent being completely inventive?
SPEAKER_1: Like, how about a drone copter that detaches from yours, attaches to the other bot, picks it up and drops it out of the ring?
SPEAKER_1: That would be funny and embarrassing.
SPEAKER_1: Or just, I'm just thinking, does high design in one capacity restrict, for example, your mobility or your agility, which you might need combating some robots versus others?
SPEAKER_5: There's a lot of strategy that goes into this.
SPEAKER_5: And in some ways, it's a big game in rock, paper, scissors.
SPEAKER_5: So you might have a design that is very dominating, but there's going to be at least one other design out there that you're not going to fare well against.
SPEAKER_5: So some of it just comes down to who you get as your opponent.
SPEAKER_5: And some of that's just the luck of the draw.
SPEAKER_1: Wow, because in boxing, I know who I'm going to fight.
SPEAKER_1: And so I can look at films and prepare for that boxer.
SPEAKER_1: He's going to have a left jab when I drop my right arm and I can anticipate this.
SPEAKER_1: So you can't anticipate that.
SPEAKER_5: No, not really.
SPEAKER_5: And it's effective.
SPEAKER_5: If you look at the landscape of everybody's robots, how they're designed, they all have a plan for me.
SPEAKER_5: So I've probably changed the landscape of the sport more than any other robot.
SPEAKER_5: Because if they don't have something to counteract my horizontal attack, they're going to go home in a box.
SPEAKER_5: I'm going to disassemble them in the arena.
SPEAKER_3: What about just lifting you up?
SPEAKER_3: Your attack happens on one plane and that plane is always the same.
SPEAKER_3: So why wouldn't I just get you off of that plane?
SPEAKER_3: Just lift you up and now I don't have to worry about your attack and I can figure out something else to do with you.
SPEAKER_5: And that is one thing that happens, not necessarily lifting.
SPEAKER_1: Chuck, you're giving people...
SPEAKER_5: There's Mojo here.
SPEAKER_5: There's no trade secrets here.
SPEAKER_1: We'll bleep that all out just to protect your future.
SPEAKER_5: What a lot of them will do is they'll try to have just a fairly hefty wedge in the front so that when I hit them, instead of digging in, I'll glance off and they'll try to direct my energy up instead of into the robots.
SPEAKER_3: So that's the like a cow.
SPEAKER_5: What's that thing?
SPEAKER_5: Like a cow catcher.
SPEAKER_5: And if they make that strong enough, then I can't dig into it.
SPEAKER_1: If it's the moment to say, Chuck, where do you live?
SPEAKER_4: He's catching cows and cutting the legs off horses.
SPEAKER_3: That's exactly what I'm just like a lumber black.
SPEAKER_1: I thought you came from Philly, and now you're talking about the cattle guard on the front of locomotives.
SPEAKER_2: Maybe not.
SPEAKER_2: So Ray, here we go.
SPEAKER_2: If I throw tech at my robot, say I put in some movement sensors, and then I'm allowing myself to be able to react to that movement, am I upgrading or am I making myself more vulnerable to someone like Tombstone?
SPEAKER_2: I've personalized it.
SPEAKER_2: Someone.
SPEAKER_2: Something.
SPEAKER_5: And there are builders that have done that.
SPEAKER_5: So there was a robot called Chomp that had a hammer, and it had a lot of onboard sensors, and it could track the other robot so it could fire the hammer at the right time to catch it when it was driving past.
SPEAKER_5: So it was a fairly intricate design as far as it's on, and it could run autonomously.
SPEAKER_5: It could track and follow the other robot.
SPEAKER_1: What was that bot called?
SPEAKER_5: Chomp.
SPEAKER_1: Oh, they should have called it Thor.
SPEAKER_5: Well, it's a very first build.
SPEAKER_5: It had a jaw on the front instead of the hammer.
SPEAKER_5: So they kept the name, but then redesigned it and did some different things.
SPEAKER_5: And it was a beautiful piece of engineering.
SPEAKER_5: If you looked at it, it was just stunning and how well it was built.
SPEAKER_5: And it didn't win that many matches.
SPEAKER_5: So it's not necessarily all that tech is there, and it can be made to be used.
SPEAKER_5: And the reality is nobody's made it be successful in the arena yet.
SPEAKER_3: Also, no go.
SPEAKER_5: And it's really hard to beat human reactions and reflexes.
SPEAKER_5: It's really hard to build something that will outperform that.
SPEAKER_2: So how many are autonomous?
SPEAKER_2: How many are actually driven with the human element?
SPEAKER_2: So they have a driver.
SPEAKER_2: And if you do not have an experienced, intuitive driver, are you really just wasting your time?
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, good point.
SPEAKER_1: In other words, what he's saying is, how important are you?
SPEAKER_5: I am the most important person at the event.
SPEAKER_5: Let's make that real clear right up front.
SPEAKER_5: But Chuck, to my knowledge, is the only one that's fully autonomous.
SPEAKER_5: There were others.
SPEAKER_5: There's others that had autonomous features.
SPEAKER_5: It's totally in control of the drive, but there was something that timed the weapon or something like that.
SPEAKER_1: See, that's the kind of robot I would build, an autonomous robot, and then you'd see me, the designer on the sidelines, and I'd just be eating a sandwich, while the thing's kicking in.
SPEAKER_5: Part of the safety rules don't allow it.
SPEAKER_5: You still have to be able to arm and start the robot remotely and shut it down remotely.
SPEAKER_3: That makes sense.
SPEAKER_3: We don't want Skynet on BattleBots.
SPEAKER_5: Even if it is fully autonomous, there's still a remote control function to how they work.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, in the middle of the fight, the autonomous robot is like, hey man, why aren't we fighting each other?
SPEAKER_3: Those guys are the problem, man.
SPEAKER_1: The autonomous robots achieve consciousness.
SPEAKER_3: Look at what they've done to us.
SPEAKER_3: Look at how they've turned us against each other.
SPEAKER_3: Join me, brother.
SPEAKER_3: Join me.
SPEAKER_1: You can see the photos of them escaping the venue.
SPEAKER_5: Right.
SPEAKER_3: After they killed every human in the place.
SPEAKER_5: You guys need to come to an event a lot.
SPEAKER_4: That's all there is to it.
SPEAKER_3: So isn't it more expensive though?
SPEAKER_5: Oh my God, it's expensive.
SPEAKER_3: Aren't you kind of throwing good money after bad, creating an autonomous robot that is going to be destroyed in battle?
SPEAKER_5: You have to have that clear in your head before you build a combat robot that I am going to lose every piece of this.
SPEAKER_5: It's all going to get destroyed.
SPEAKER_5: And if you don't have that in your head when you start building, you're in the wrong sport.
SPEAKER_3: And how autonomous are they?
SPEAKER_3: Could they pass a touring test?
SPEAKER_5: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_1: They don't have brains, they just have bronze.
SPEAKER_5: Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_5: It's all about muscle, then, at this point.
SPEAKER_5: Just trying to attack the other robot.
SPEAKER_1: So how many years are we away from this being an Olympic sport?
SPEAKER_5: You know, I don't know.
SPEAKER_5: It's...
SPEAKER_4: Four.
SPEAKER_5: It is definitely an international sport.
SPEAKER_5: So it's worldwide.
SPEAKER_5: People from all over compete.
SPEAKER_5: They have local events all over the world, and then we have a lot of international competitors that come to BattleBots.
SPEAKER_5: So we're already there that there's this international draw and flare to it.
SPEAKER_5: When are we going to have it be a more an official...
SPEAKER_5: You know, I don't know.
SPEAKER_5: I'd love to see it.
SPEAKER_5: I'd love to see more of these events.
SPEAKER_2: Right.
SPEAKER_2: In competition, how long do you get between notification of your next opponent and actually going into the arena with that opponent?
SPEAKER_5: And that depends on where you're at in the tournament.
SPEAKER_5: So when you first get there...
SPEAKER_5: So BattleBots itself films over about two weeks, two and a half weeks.
SPEAKER_5: So it's an extended filming process.
SPEAKER_5: So when you first show up and all the robots are there and all the robots are ready to fight, you might have one or two days between your fights.
SPEAKER_5: And then as it narrows down, you get closer and closer to the final, you have less and less time between matches.
SPEAKER_2: So if you get an opponent, sorry to interrupt there, if you get an opponent that's got your personal robot's kryptonite, are you entitled under the rules to be able to go, I know just what to do here, give me that screwdriver, and give me that piece of Kevlar or whatever it is?
SPEAKER_5: We do have a lot of on the fly, in the pits, emergency engineering to come up with answers to whoever you're fighting.
SPEAKER_5: And this is as long as what you do complies with the safety rules and you don't exceed the weight limit, which is an absolute hard limit.
SPEAKER_5: So you can add stuff, but you still have to be under that maximum weight.
SPEAKER_5: So you either have to have room to add stuff, or you have to take something else off to add on whatever extra you're adding on.
SPEAKER_1: I suppose you fight and you're injured, but you win.
SPEAKER_1: Do you get to bring out a fresh version of the bot for the next fight?
SPEAKER_5: It used to be that was kind of frowned upon.
SPEAKER_5: Now they just want a good show, so they kind of actually encourage that.
SPEAKER_5: So this last event, we took three versions of Tombstone so that we'd always have one that was physically ready to rock and roll.
SPEAKER_2: So you're a 250-pound combat robot, and so that's basically, I think we can call that a monster.
SPEAKER_2: But we've got some really lightweight categories.
SPEAKER_2: Now I'm thinking this must have a big difference in your strategy in how you approach an opponent with a lightweight combat robot as opposed to a monster.
SPEAKER_5: There are designs that don't scale well.
SPEAKER_5: So there are certain things that you would do in a heavier robot that work fine, and the lighter they get, the less effective they become.
SPEAKER_5: So the overhead hammer attack works a little better in heavy ones.
SPEAKER_5: As they get smaller and smaller, you just can't, there's not enough room in the weight to have a hammer that will do anything to the other robot.
SPEAKER_1: But it's really hard for a fourth grader to kill an adult.
SPEAKER_3: It's really hard.
SPEAKER_5: I don't know, I've met some pretty rough fourth graders, I guess.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, the mass thing is certainly a big, that's why I think most human organized combat is separated by mass, right?
SPEAKER_1: When I wrestled, we had 10 weight categories.
SPEAKER_1: Split by, you know, seven pounds separating the lower weight category, seven, eight pounds.
SPEAKER_1: That's hardly anything, but it matters.
SPEAKER_1: And so, yes, clearly that pairing matters.
SPEAKER_1: But I'd like Gary's question in that what you're saying is the suite of weaponry you might wield as a very light robot is different from that of a heavy robot.
SPEAKER_5: Yeah, the design changes.
SPEAKER_5: There are things that just don't scale well.
SPEAKER_5: It's just the simple truth of it.
SPEAKER_1: Guys, we've got to take a quick break.
SPEAKER_1: But when we come back more with Ray Billings, we're going to take a deep dive into the world of BattleBots and what other benefits it might confer, either the combatants or others who watch it.
SPEAKER_1: Schools, who knows?
SPEAKER_1: This is a universe that's growing within the already expanding universe called the universe.
SPEAKER_1: We'll find out more when StarTalk's StarTalk.
SPEAKER_1: We're back, StarTalk Sports Edition.
SPEAKER_1: I got Ray Billings, the greatest bot, battle bot, murderer bot, bot murderer, this sector of the Milky Way galaxy.
SPEAKER_3: The magistrate of murder.
SPEAKER_3: The kingpin of killing.
SPEAKER_5: Oh, the internet's gonna kill me after this.
SPEAKER_1: Chuck is on a roll.
SPEAKER_1: We gotta wait this one out.
SPEAKER_5: Lord Chuck is on a roll.
SPEAKER_1: All right, so tell me what happens.
SPEAKER_1: Does this attract, who does it attract?
SPEAKER_1: And does it work in schools, for example?
SPEAKER_1: Kids love this kind of thing, but does this affect their career choice?
SPEAKER_1: Do teachers like it or their principals?
SPEAKER_1: What's going on?
SPEAKER_5: I do a lot of displays for boy scouts in schools and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_5: So I do a lot of community engagement with this sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_5: And universally, I've found that kids-
SPEAKER_1: In front of me, you mean Earthwide.
SPEAKER_5: Yeah.
SPEAKER_4: You haven't checked Mars with BattleBots.
SPEAKER_5: All right, well, there are robots there.
SPEAKER_5: I don't know if they're fighting.
SPEAKER_4: There are robots there.
SPEAKER_1: It would be funny if you uploaded a new program and all the rovers on Mars started attacking.
SPEAKER_5: Oh, that, even if all they do is just sort of bump into each other, but I'm still doing it on Mars.
SPEAKER_5: I've got that, there we go, because.
SPEAKER_3: I'm pretty sure that the American rovers actually have that program already uploaded.
SPEAKER_1: So what happens in K through 12?
SPEAKER_5: Okay, so there are ways that you can engage kids with this that wouldn't otherwise be engaged.
SPEAKER_5: I've done displays at the rich neighborhoods and I've done them in the ghetto.
SPEAKER_5: I've universally, I believe Earthwide found that kids will always amaze you with how smart they are everywhere if you find a way to get them motivated, okay?
SPEAKER_5: And this is one of those things where kids get motivated.
SPEAKER_5: They want to be involved.
SPEAKER_5: So you walk up to a middle school kid and you say math and you can just watch their eyes roll back in their head.
SPEAKER_5: They don't care, but you say, okay, it's a 5,000 RPM motor, it's 21 reduction.
SPEAKER_5: It's a 10 inch wheel.
SPEAKER_5: How fast is this robot driving?
SPEAKER_5: Now math has a purpose.
SPEAKER_5: Now there's a meaning to it.
SPEAKER_5: And they will dive into that with an enthusiasm that they won't in just normal regular studies.
SPEAKER_5: Said they'll learn more.
SPEAKER_5: One of my fellow competitors, he coined this term and I love it.
SPEAKER_5: He called it stealth learning.
SPEAKER_5: They have no idea all the stuff they're picking up.
SPEAKER_5: It's an amazing amount of engineering skills and they're doing it because they want to.
SPEAKER_3: That makes sense.
SPEAKER_3: Now I bet you said you've done it in the suburbs and in the ghettos.
SPEAKER_3: Now, which one of those bots are more dangerous?
SPEAKER_5: It doesn't matter, the kids are still, they're absolutely into it, they love it, they want to be involved.
SPEAKER_3: So what about this though?
SPEAKER_3: I'm thinking about true battle circumstances.
SPEAKER_3: Are there any implications for the US.
SPEAKER_3: Army to take the things that happened in your arena and perhaps apply them to the actual theater of operations?
SPEAKER_1: So I'm going to restate that.
SPEAKER_1: So Ray, after you featured one of your bots, did a man in black come up to you and take it from you and say, and you go home and all your plans are stolen from your cabinets, did that ever happen to you?
SPEAKER_5: I haven't had any man in black conversations.
SPEAKER_5: A couple of the suppliers that I use do work with military contracts.
SPEAKER_5: So some of the engineering that goes into this does find its way into military applications.
SPEAKER_5: But we're not, most of that is motion control and things of that nature, not necessarily actual weaponry.
SPEAKER_2: Right, that sounds an awful lot like a yes.
SPEAKER_3: But could you, I mean, cause honestly, when you talk about drones, drone technology, and then you talk about the fact that your robots can be replicated and they're kind of simple task robots.
SPEAKER_3: Right, so couldn't this be something where, if it were a matter of like going in and clearing a field or going in and actually just engaging in hand to hand, you know, without actual fighting the way we do, talk about cutting legs off.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, right?
SPEAKER_5: Oh yeah, is there an application there for it?
SPEAKER_5: I haven't had anybody from the military contact me about it.
SPEAKER_5: But like, you know, if that's what he'd have to tell us, even if he were, I was going to say, yeah, like, if they gave me basically an unlimited amount of weight and they wanted something that went in and cleared out city blocks, just cut the buildings down, could you imagine what a, you know, 50,000 pound tombstone would do?
SPEAKER_5: I just couldn't go in and wipe out an area pretty easily.
SPEAKER_5: But, you know, it's not something that they've approached me for.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, but clearly, you've thought about it.
SPEAKER_4: You know, come on.
SPEAKER_3: That didn't just pop up in your head right now.
SPEAKER_5: I've had this conversation before, absolutely.
SPEAKER_4: Evil genius.
SPEAKER_1: So how close are you just philosophically from what's been portrayed in the Transformers series?
SPEAKER_5: Well, you know, there's, there are some cool things mechanically that you could bake happen if you were trying to, you know, morphing arrangements as far as robots go.
SPEAKER_5: You know, I love the shows, but, you know, it's kind of unrealistic in a lot of aspects, too.
SPEAKER_2: All right.
SPEAKER_2: So let's, Ray, when we go forward in time.
SPEAKER_1: Oh, you mean robotic monsters from another galaxy.
SPEAKER_1: That's not realistic, you're saying?
SPEAKER_1: So, you know, okay, just just verifying.
SPEAKER_5: The idea that they're driving around on my streets, I think is probably unrealistic.
SPEAKER_5: But other stuff that's out there is certainly probably more realistic.
SPEAKER_2: So where are we going in the future for tournaments like BattleBots?
SPEAKER_2: I mean, some of the maneuverability and agility of the bigger robots is limited.
SPEAKER_2: Are we going to find ourselves with more airborne combative robots?
SPEAKER_2: Are we going to go in a different direction for future and law changes, as I say?
SPEAKER_1: Where's it headed?
SPEAKER_5: Yeah, so as far as our contests go, they do allow drones in the arena, but they limit them on weight and what they can carry and what they can do.
SPEAKER_5: So for us, the changes are going to be more if they decide to alter those rules going forward.
SPEAKER_5: Society at large is another question.
SPEAKER_5: I mean, absolutely, drone tech is going to continue to just get more and more invasive.
SPEAKER_5: Every six months, you're going to have different stuff.
SPEAKER_3: How about the sturdiness of your robots?
SPEAKER_3: Because we're seeing now more robots in everyday life.
SPEAKER_3: Like you walk into a supermarket and there's like a robot that comes and cleans up spills now.
SPEAKER_3: You know, there's a robot that goes around and gives you store directions.
SPEAKER_3: There's a pizza delivery robot now.
SPEAKER_3: So how about the durability of your robots?
SPEAKER_3: Is there any applications for real life for what we're going to see in the proliferation of robots in our everyday life?
SPEAKER_1: You mean durability?
SPEAKER_1: You mean how potent is the design and the concept?
SPEAKER_4: Yes, exactly.
SPEAKER_5: So we do a lot of development as far as the motors, the drive systems, motion control.
SPEAKER_5: We probably attack that more than any other sport I can think of in that regard.
SPEAKER_5: So like one of my sponsors that makes my drive motors, those motors started out as electric wheelchair motors.
SPEAKER_5: And so over the years as I have broken them and then we've collectively worked on ways to fix the things that broke, they now have a better product that they sell for electric wheelchairs.
SPEAKER_5: So everybody says it's just destruction.
SPEAKER_5: There's no actual benefits to it and whatnot.
SPEAKER_5: And I would disagree.
SPEAKER_5: We make a lot of products better because we're pushing them to their limit.
SPEAKER_5: We're finding the ways that they can break so you can make better ones.
SPEAKER_5: And as far as just robots in general, pizza delivery robots, things like that.
SPEAKER_5: Obviously, us creating drive systems that are robust and can handle a lot of abuse, you can make more reliable things for day to day use as well.
SPEAKER_5: So there's definitely positives that come from it.
SPEAKER_1: Might there be in the future robots that don't kill but simply disarm?
SPEAKER_1: So there's a movement in the military and in police departments to have non-lethal weaponry, and the taser is among them.
SPEAKER_1: So can you imagine a future, and do you need new rules to enable this?
SPEAKER_1: Where you have a robot that creates an electromagnetic pulse, and it shocks the other robot.
SPEAKER_1: The robot doesn't hurt it in that sense, but it renders it incapacitated.
SPEAKER_1: Or better yet, imagine just a net.
SPEAKER_1: Or a wad of chewing gum.
SPEAKER_1: You just toss it into the machine.
SPEAKER_5: So you've just described a couple of things that are absolutely forbidden in the ruleset.
SPEAKER_5: So if somebody were to take a big chevlar net and throw it on tombstone, it would wrap up in the weapon and it wouldn't work.
SPEAKER_5: So this is effective.
SPEAKER_5: But it's also incredibly boring to watch as a television show.
SPEAKER_3: It's not good TV.
SPEAKER_5: EMP is another thing.
SPEAKER_5: Blocking radio signals.
SPEAKER_5: If you just block the transmission from the other guy's control system, his robot would just get there dead.
SPEAKER_5: So you could win that way and nobody would watch the show.
SPEAKER_1: Or you can turn the signals on themselves and have the bot commit suicide.
SPEAKER_5: Yeah, there are various things.
SPEAKER_5: We talked about CHOMP, it's LiDAR-based tracking system for all of this stuff.
SPEAKER_5: There are hacks you can do for LiDAR-based systems to basically lie to it and say there's something right in front of it so that it would get confused.
SPEAKER_5: So I was looking at options to do that and BattleBots was like, no, no, no, you can't mess with their control systems.
SPEAKER_5: I had to ask.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, so what you really also need is have a fluid that's in these robots that's red so that when they get damaged, they bleed.
SPEAKER_3: Oh, man.
SPEAKER_1: And then we get Arnold to say, Chuck, I need you to imitate Arnold here.
SPEAKER_4: Get to the chopper.
SPEAKER_1: No, no.
SPEAKER_3: I'm right here.
SPEAKER_3: Come on.
SPEAKER_1: It's from Predator.
SPEAKER_1: If it bleeds, we can kill it.
SPEAKER_3: Oh, but that was Carl Weathers.
SPEAKER_3: It was.
SPEAKER_3: It was Arnold.
SPEAKER_3: You're right.
SPEAKER_1: Arnold said that.
SPEAKER_3: If it bleeds, it dies.
SPEAKER_3: If it bleeds, we can kill it.
SPEAKER_1: We can kill it.
SPEAKER_3: If it bleeds, we can kill it.
SPEAKER_1: I think blood would put a nice mess on the ring.
SPEAKER_3: Is that something that they actually stayed away from because honestly, I know Neil's making a joke, but that kind of is a sensational aspect.
SPEAKER_5: Too close.
SPEAKER_2: Too close to home.
SPEAKER_3: It is a draw as well.
SPEAKER_5: You know, honestly, I think one of the biggest things there is whatever you do in the arena, they got to clean it up afterwards.
SPEAKER_5: And so there's a lot of things they just, like they don't want you to have confetti.
SPEAKER_5: They don't want you to have, there's other things you could do like that that would put on a show.
SPEAKER_5: And they just don't want to mess with that crap all over the arena because they got more fights they want to go through.
SPEAKER_3: If only the Coliseum had that.
SPEAKER_1: No, the lions come and lick up the blood effort.
SPEAKER_1: So yeah, I think the, so it's like the Old West, the movies in the Old West, people got shot but you never saw blood.
SPEAKER_3: Isn't that something?
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, there was never blood in any of it.
SPEAKER_2: They do go up in flames.
SPEAKER_2: Bits carved off them.
SPEAKER_2: And there is carnage in the robotic sense.
SPEAKER_3: Fire is robot blood.
SPEAKER_5: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
SPEAKER_3: Fire is robot blood, I'll give you that.
SPEAKER_2: Some of those collisions, Ray, are unbelievably loud.
SPEAKER_5: If all you have ever seen is on video and you haven't seen it live, you are really missing the level of power that's being unleashed.
SPEAKER_1: That's the same with NASCAR.
SPEAKER_5: Really, it is, honestly.
SPEAKER_1: And rocket launches.
SPEAKER_1: You just have no idea how bright that engine is, how deep the rumble is across your chest.
SPEAKER_1: Your TV is not capturing that at all.
SPEAKER_5: You can't get that visceral feel in video.
SPEAKER_5: You just can't.
SPEAKER_5: A wheel is about eight pounds, one of the wheels on the side of my robot.
SPEAKER_5: If I pull one of those off the opponent robot, it'll swing at the glass, at the leg stand, at near tip speeds.
SPEAKER_5: You've got an eight pound wheel going at the arena wall at a couple hundred miles an hour.
SPEAKER_5: And when you're on the outside of that arena, and believe me, this arena is really stout, and you can see the leg stand absorb that impact.
SPEAKER_5: And it's like banging on a drum.
SPEAKER_5: You can feel the pressure wave move through your body outside the arena just from getting hit there.
SPEAKER_5: There's no way that video just can't capture how much power is actually being unleashed.
SPEAKER_1: So we got to really land this plane right now?
SPEAKER_1: Or settle down this bot?
SPEAKER_3: We got to kill this bot right now.
SPEAKER_1: Well, just take us out, Ray, with just a thought.
SPEAKER_1: Is your field growing?
SPEAKER_1: And where is it going to be in ten years?
SPEAKER_5: The amount of people that are involved in this sport is clearly growing.
SPEAKER_5: I think last time they had like 500 submissions to be on the show, and they only picked 64.
SPEAKER_5: So the people that are trying to get involved, there's a lot more people involved.
SPEAKER_1: They picked 64 because it's very divisible by two in a...
SPEAKER_5: Yeah, you have to limit it to what you can film and run with.
SPEAKER_3: It's like the NCAA tournament.
SPEAKER_5: There's a lot of non-televised events that are all over the place.
SPEAKER_5: Those are seeing a big increase in people as well.
SPEAKER_1: Well, it's cool.
SPEAKER_1: It's an honor to have you on our show being such a significant force in this field, and the field is growing.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe there will one day be a statue, not to you, but to Tombstone.
SPEAKER_5: I'll take that either way.
SPEAKER_1: So guys, we got to end it there.
SPEAKER_1: So Ray, it's been a delight to have you.
SPEAKER_1: Gary, always good to have you.
SPEAKER_1: Chuck, wouldn't do this without you guys.
SPEAKER_3: Always a pleasure.
SPEAKER_1: Neil deGrasse Tyson here.
SPEAKER_1: You can hear your personal astrophysicist as always.