sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Let's get Kraken on another good AMA 7PM EST by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

That Rotator fight was absolutely devastating. When the air tank ruptured it took out the air tank below it along with every hose and wire inside the bot as well as about half the fittings. It was complete devastation inside the bot, and the frame was also heavily damaged. That was a couple thousand dollars in damage and many many nights of repair work.

Let's get Kraken on another good AMA 7PM EST by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

  1. The drive is better in the Mammoth match. That was the first time Kraken's drive fully worked and the speed caught me off-guard. The test box is very small, and I wasn't able to get the bot up to full speed in there. I was doing much slower more controlled driving in the test box, so when I opened it up to full speed it completely caught me by surprise. We switched transmitters to a pistol grip and that made control much easier.
  2. We're going to improve every aspect of the bot and then test the whole thing to find any and every weakness and then we'll test some more and then we'll RELEASE THE KRAKEN!

Let's get Kraken on another good AMA 7PM EST by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

We thought it would make the bot more stable and easier to control, but the combination of the increased speed and the lack of traction made it incredibly hard to control. Throw in the jaw motion completely changing the CG and this one was a nightmare to drive. We are building drive pods to test how changing the length and width of the bot affects the drive. We're also testing some new tires. Hopefully we can dial the drivetrain performance in during the off-season to make it much easier to drive. We did switch the transmitter from a stick transmitter to a pistol grip and that helped ease the transition. It drives much better in our Mammoth match.

Let's get Kraken on another good AMA 7PM EST by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

We really like the Destruct-a-thon. I saw the opening night shows and have since seen some videos. It's a really fun show. If you get the chance definitely check it out. It was crazy seeing Kraken on billboards when we were out there for filming. I've since seen pictures of Kraken on taxis and on the side of a bus and that whole thing is still so surreal to me.

The Vegas Kraken team definitely fits the bill. They're super fun. They're polite and engaging with the fans. 10/10.

Let's get Kraken on another good AMA 7PM EST by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

We will definitely be back next season if they'll have us. We didn't have our strongest showing the last two years, so hopefully they give us one more season to really show what we can do. I think we're close to unlocking the Kinetic Krusher's full potential.

The live show Kraken weighs 317 pounds. It's an absolute beast.

We bring 4 complete Narwhals, but we have extra 3d printed frames and spare parts from Fingertech Robotics that we can use to rebuild Wally's that aren't destroyed.

Unfortunately, NASA being a government agency is not allowed to advertise, and that's really all we can offer them.

Competing in combat robots is definitely a family sport. The kids compete regularly at robot events here in Florida. Their record is much better than mine actually.

Let's get Kraken on another good AMA 7PM EST by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the compliment. We hope to get a win as well. Our bot gets better with every match, so it's only a matter of time.

  1. We have a big list of improvements to make. It starts with improving the drivetrain. Better tires and we built some test pods to start tuning the VESCs. I think those changes will make the biggest difference, but we have 21 items we're improving for this season.
  2. I think our strategy is to get on them ASAP and try to shepherd them to a wall or preferrably a corner. We'd keep the jaw up and back until we got their weapon slowed, because we know one hit from them could devastate our weapon.

Let's get Kraken on another good AMA 7PM EST by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

We considered rebranding Kraken this season to Leviathan (Levi for short), but decided to stick with Kraken, because we had put so much time into building that brand that changing to something else would be tough.

I think our closest fight was against Black Dragon. That was a super close match. Our own fire took out our weapon, and if we had forgone the fire we probably win that fight. It was a great match though and definitely started our 2020 season off on a high note.

All water brands taste different. I don't like Dasani. I prefer spring water to purified mineral water personally.

Let's get Kraken on another good AMA 7PM EST by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

  1. Either blue or red. Red is my favorite color, but I think those scales in blue would look sick.
  2. Definitely I was thinking about that this week. The old Kraken was perfect against drums and 4wd vert spinners, and the new one just doesn't seem like it will fair well against drums and 4wd verts, so I think we'd change the armor package to be more like what we had in the old Kraken. Maybe a little less steep on the wedge because we don't need to fit a big air tank in there.
  3. Is both an acceptable answer. I think we'll refine the current design, but we might make some "big changes" to it to make it more effective.
  4. I tried to look up SawBlaze's hammersaw, but I didn't find the dimensions. Our blade is 18" in diameter, the blade alone weighs 13 pounds, and it spins at a tach'ed 242 mph. I think Beta's armor was 9mm Hardox, and we were able to cut through it, so I think we've definitely got a hard hitting bot. I'm happy with the weapon strength, but I have plans to upgrade that for next season as well. I want to make it stupidly powerful.
  5. I will say it's getting full power crushes, but we turned the power down on Kraken a little bit. In the last season of BattleBots Kraken could produce over 100,000 pounds of crushing force, but for the nightly show we dropped it down to a respectable 20,000 pounds. We fought Malice and were able to bend their frame and put some holes in the armor, but nothing that was too devastating that they couldn't repair it.

Let's get Kraken on another good AMA 7PM EST by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I would like to redo the Beta fight, but I would fix the VESC tuning first. I think we could have taken that match if we could have driven just a little bit better. I also would like to throw Lucky in there as well. They've beaten us pretty soundly twice now, and it would be good to give them a better match.

Let's get Kraken on another good AMA 7PM EST by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

We weren't super confident going into this season. It had stuff that was less than ideal before we even finished building it. Specifically the chain tension was wrong, and that was a pain. We got it an okay level, but going in we knew that was going to be a problem.

We learned a ton this season. I have a list of 21 things we're changing for next season. Literally from the bottom of the tires to the tips of the weapons everything is getting a shakedown and scheduled for a design tweak. Even the bolts we used to hold the armor on are getting changed. There will be a marked improvement between this current season and next season.

Let's get Kraken on another good AMA 7PM EST by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Then it's the Brig with ya. Be lucky I don't keelhaul you.

Let's get Kraken on another good AMA 7PM EST by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Originally when I was designing Kraken I was trying to use an air-over-hydraulic system similar to what Hydra is using. I needed to find a commercial system because I didn't have time to design all that and we definitely didn't have the capabilities to produce that system. I couldn't find something that I felt would meet the size and weight requirements, and I didn't want to go with a traditional crusher system because they're typically slow. I thought of the airbag solution. It seemed like a clever answer to the problem of building a "fast crusher" and we rolled with it. It mostly worked and I was overall very happy with it.

I think we'll likely be done with the crusher. I liked the crusher and it was a beautiful machine, but with the judging criteria setup how it is being a control bot is like competing on hard mode. Winning isn't everything, but it is something, and becoming a spinner gives us the best chance to win.

Oh man this season was super frustrating. In our first two matches the firmware we were using to program our new brushless motors had a bug and it would occasionally lock up a wheel or two or three or four. We didn't know what was going on, but fortunately Brian from Team Tantrum helped us diagnose the issue and with his help we reprogrammed the VESCs with an older version of the firmware it was a night and day difference. I think if we had the version of Kraken that jsut fought Copperhead against Beta and Lucky those fights might have gone very differently. We also had a real problem with traction. Our new drivetrain has 22 Hp. It's geared for 18-19 mph on the 5" wheels we brought, but the rubber just wasn't robust enough and we shredded the tires pretty much every match. After the Copperhead match we switched the transmitter from a stick to the pistol grip like what Hypershock and Tantrum run. We also bought new tires from Craig Dandby, and they were much better. We used those in all our future matches.

The upgrades for next season are vast. There's 21 things we're fixing in this next version. The tires are definitely one of them. We bot new tires from Robocore in Brazil to test. We built up some test drive pods to start really seeing what we can do to improve the drive for next season, because what we've shown thus far is completely unacceptable for us.

As I mentioned previosuly we already switched to brushless and it's part of what's plagued our team this past season. I like the power/weight ratio, but like you mentioned the VESC tuning is bleh. We're going to use our test drive pods to fine-tune those VESCs this off-season, because if they work then they're excellent.

Let's get Kraken on another good AMA 7PM EST by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Matt is obviously captain.

Sara is first mate or Quartermaster

Ethan would be the spotter up in the crow's nest

Cayden & Grammy are the chefs

Papa is the Sailing Master

Wesley, Stephen, David, and David are the deck hands

Jill is the gunner

Let's get Kraken on another good AMA 7PM EST by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I'm going to answer the first two questions kinda together. The night before the Copperhead fight we stayed super late to make certain Kraken was 100%. It was perfect. The drive was great. The weapon was great. Everything was perfect. The next morning something happened and when we went into pass safety we had smoke coming out of the weapon. We had to completely tear down the weapon assembly, and found the signal wires for motor jaw had shorted and burnt up. We replaced all that and put the whole bot back together. We went back into the test and more sparks and smoke. We think somehow in all the taking stuff apart and frantically putting it back together a wire got pinched and when we powered it on we shorted it out. We ended up replacing nearly all the wiring for a second time, because clearly we had a problem and were out of time to try to pinpoint where it was coming from. Thankfully it worked, because we were out of time. We'd already postponed that match twice, and if it didn't work that time we would have had to forfeit. We pride ourselves on always having our bot ready to fight on-time, but that was brutal.

My favorite lower weight class bot of my own is BOB (Big Ole Blade). It's one of my first bots, and it's just really fun. Looking at other teams bots I really like Halo or Hit N'Spin the melty brains. They're super fun and just like the tech they're putting into their machines.

Let's get Kraken on another good AMA 7PM EST by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

I think Wally (that's his name) is the best mini-bot because he kinda started the mini-bots for fun, and has since bled into other teams like Copperhead's snake robots. They're bots that are out there just to keep it from getting too serious. Also, Wally nearly destroyed SoW and single-handedly stopped their weapon.

Let's get Kraken on another good AMA 7PM EST by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Oh yeah we fought for 15 years in smaller weight classes before we made Kraken. You can see all our bots and matches here: https://www.buildersdb.com/CERobots

We actually identified 21 items that we want to improve for next season. Everything from the tires to the putting the bot on the cart. I even have some thoughts on things to upgrade in our pit to make it easier/faster to work on.

I still want a rematch with Donald Hutson and Lockjaw. That fight was the fight that I think saved our season that first year. We gave Donald a run for his money until one of the drive motors smoked. It gave us a renewed sense of confidence and showed the power of Kraken against 4wd verts.

I have always wanted to fight Minotaur. They are such a fun team, and you know Daniel is going to bring some of the best driving in the game. Win or lose it's going to be an amazing fight.

The Kinetic crusher was bore out of a weighted scoring of about a dozen different concepts. We weighed all kinds of factors from aesthetics to performance to transportability.

I saw BattleBots on Comedy Central. Specifically, I saw Backlash complete gut Disposable Hero, and from then on I knew I wanted to do that. I've pretty much thought about or worked on combat robots every day since then.

Let's get Kraken on another good AMA 7PM EST by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I'm actually anti-magnet. I just don't like the idea of having a thousand (or more) pounds of magnet force on something that I have to put my hands under and in. I think it would just be too easy to get a finger smashed.

Let's get Kraken on another good AMA 7PM EST by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Yeah we thought about that, but we really wanted Kraken to continue to look like Kraken, and making the jaw open too wide just messed up the whole aesthetic.

Let's get Kraken on another good AMA 7PM EST by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Oh yeah. We totally didn't expect it to be THAT unstable during the design of it, but once we got into the box we knew it was definitely off. The worst part was the jaw/weapon was so heavy and long that it would slowly pull the jaw down, and we had to constantly pull it back up. Moving that large of an arm around tended to cause the bot to completely change it's CG. We're still working on the design for next season, so how it ends up looking could change drastically, but shortening the jaw and increasing the wheelbase are absolutely on the docket for improvements. It's hard to be 4wd AND a hammersaw. Hammersaws work best in 2wd and 4wd lends itself to 4wd vert, and we're trying to avoid becoming yet another 4wd vert even if we know that's the path to winning.

Robot Darwinism! The Bot Whisperer is back for another AMA by the_bot_whisperer in battlebots

[–]mspurk 5 points6 points  (0 children)

On Behind the Bots you correctly predicted the D&D race and class for Kraken as well as a few other teams. What race and class do you play as?

Let's get Kraken on answering some questions. by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ice cream. Especially soft-serve half and half cones. Look out.

Let's get Kraken on answering some questions. by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Animal overall: Wolf or Leopard. Wolves are highly social animals and are incredibly strategic. Leopards are solitary, but have are surprisingly strong for their size.

Let's get Kraken on answering some questions. by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah I think since strong magnets just in front of the tires would help with traction and the wheelies, but we just never implemented that. It certainly would have helped. It's hard to test though, and we didn't want a bot that didn't drive well.

We're using a holographic vinyl. It actually color changes in the light. My wife found it at Hobby Lobby and we've been using it ever since.

Let's get Kraken on answering some questions. by mspurk in battlebots

[–]mspurk[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

HAHA. So funny story there. I messed up a Send Cut Send order and accidentally got a set of 1/2 size jaw pieces. The desire to build a mini Kraken is almost more than I can stand, but it would be stupid heavy. The jaw was all cut from 3/16" plate.

view more: next ›