Killer Bots! with BattleBots’ Ray Billings

Programmed…to kill! On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly sit down with BattleBots’ Ray Billings to discuss combat robots, his killer robot Tombstone, and how to create robotics for competition.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Sports Edition. Today, I think we're gonna settle on the title of Killer Bots. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson and I got with me Gary Riley. Oh Riley, excuse me. Hey Neil, yes, that's fine. Gary of the Rileys, yes, Gary. Yes, we are. We are very much a tribal group. Former soccer pro and former professional sports commentator, but we've got you now. You are ours. And we got Chuck Nice, Chuck and Baby.

• 0:46Chuck Nice?

  Affirmative.

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are robots before they had full vocabularies and they learned the word yes.

• 0:55Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly.

• 0:58Chuck Nice?

  That's how you know it's a robot, when it's just so formal that no-

• 1:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, when it's a robot from 50 years ago.

• 1:04Chuck Nice?

  Oh, well, that's true, yeah.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Robots would like affirmative, just say yes dude, we're fine.

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And yeah, and why give me four syllables when one will do?

• 1:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just saying. So, just remind people that you don't have to go far back to remember that there was a hit TV series called BattleBots. I remember it, I watched it, came on late at night.

• 1:25Chuck Nice?

  Damn right.

• 1:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it was basically, you know, 21st century version of jousting, maybe? But without the blood? Yeah, gladiators, you know, but without the blood and the trumpets and the, and the, you know, without all the pomp and circumstance. And plus, it was a geek haven, right? So if geeks lived in ancient Rome, they would compete the bots against each other.

• 1:54Chuck Nice?

  Of course they would have, because otherwise they would have been the ones dying.

• 1:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can't me?

• 1:59Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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? And do you know the weaknesses of the other bots? Do you know that in advance? Or do you find them? And, 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 this sector of the universe, who knows what's going on here. He's the real deal. Call him a robot warrior. And his name is Ray Billings. Ray, welcome to Startalk.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  Hey, I'm glad, glad to be here. Glad to be here. I'm glad, glad to be part of it.

• 2:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, so.

• 2:39Chuck Nice?

  Now, are you real, Ray? Are you a real person?

• 2:41Speaker 02

  I am, in fact, a real person.

• 2:43Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Good, good, good person or not, it's another thing. But yes, I'm, I'm a real person.

• 2:49Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 2:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take the window that says, are you a robot? Yeah, if we say, are you good with this? And he says affirmative, you know, then we'll question.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you've given me the out now. I just, I just have to say yes, and we're good. So, you know.

• 3:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're a learning robot?

• 3:06Speaker 02

  I can fool you, yeah.

• 3:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Ray, you're creator of one of the most successful and feared combat bots ever called Tombstone.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Tombstone, Tombstone.

• 3:17Chuck Nice?

  That's a little one of those.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  It's, it's the only battle bot robot that has won championships in two separate weight categories. So.

• 3:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, weight category. So your division was what? Heavyweight?

• 3:30Speaker 02

  Right, right now it's competing as a heavyweight. But I had built it originally as a super heavyweight. So it has won championships in both weight categories.

• 3:39Chuck Nice?

  And, and what is the weight for, like, like, is that a super, like, refrigerator? Is that a, is that a super heavyweight?

• 3:47Speaker 02

  Or? They, they've ran a multitude of weights throughout the years. Some of them are very light, all the way down to eight ounces, half a pound.

• 3:54Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay. Oh, snap.

• 3:56Speaker 02

  Um, the ones you see on television are much lighter.

• 3:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm pretty sure I can kick the ass of an eight ounce robot.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  Um, you, you might think that. Uh, the, the one pound.

• 4:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, me plus a baseball bat.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, then, yeah. Okay. The small ones are actually really vicious. So like a one, a one pound combat robot will lock your hand off really easy. Um, so, so, so they're

• 4:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like Chihuahuas.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're, they're very, very powerful. Um, the ones you see on TV are much larger. So the, the current weight category that you watch on the Battle Let's Show is 250 pounds.

• 4:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Uh, and they've, they've gone up to

• 4:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how much I weigh.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, they, they, they've gone up to super heavy. It was 320 pounds. So, um, and

• 4:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To, to, to, to just get, just want to get your background fully out here. So you're a founder of Hardcore Robotics?

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Correct. That's my team name.

• 4:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 4:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and, and you, uh, developed combat robots named Last Rites and Darkness? And hundreds of other combat robots? You, you are, it sounds like you are just evil.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  Uh, well, well, that, that, there's a hunk of the internet that would agree with you on that.

• 5:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  So I, I've got some interesting fan mail over the years, let me tell you.

• 5:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you've been called the king of kinetic energy. I like that.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah.

• 5:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um. Throwing down the physics.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Well.

• 5:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so let me tell you, if you want to talk about physics, what, 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?

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Well, okay. So the, the first thing is the matches themselves are three minutes long. So your duty

• 5:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As any good boxing match.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, your duty, your duty cycle is very short. So there are things you would do engineering wise.

• 5:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell everybody what a duty cycle is, please.

• 5:43Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, please tell them before I do.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  All right.

• 5:47Chuck Nice?

  Please tell them what a duty cycle is before I do.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  No, it's not, not that kind of duty. All right. All right. So if you design a, a, a car, okay? I mean, it's, it, it has to run for decades. You're gonna get it and you're driving it all over town. Its duty cycle is very long. Um, a, a, a powered door or something. You want to be able to open and close that door all day long. His duty cycle is virtually continuous. For a combat robot, it's three minutes. So. Three minutes and five seconds, if that thing sets itself on fire, I don't care. Cause all it has to do is survive for that three minutes. So your, your engineering thoughts are different because you're going to push things to their absolute limit.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Cause it only has to run long enough to kill the other robot. That's all the longer it has to function.

• 6:39Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 6:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do you know if you kill the other robot?

• 6:41Chuck Nice?

  So where do you go for your?

• 6:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does it tap out? Does it go in the towel?

• 6:45Chuck Nice?

  Does it go, tell my wife I love her?

• 6:52Speaker 02

  Alright, so, so.

• 6:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn, Chuck's watched too many movies. Damn, I used to think it was, that was a good thing, but not any longer Chuck.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  In, in general, a lot of the non televised events, you can tap out. You start getting your butt kicked royally. You can say, hey, I'm done. You can wave, wave the white flag. Um, Bow Wow's because it's a television show, they won't let you tap out. So if the other guy wants to keep whaling on you and you're dead, they, they want an exciting show. They want something that, you know, provides entertainment as well.

• 7:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So tell me how you think about the engineering and the physics of what's going on. If you're dubbed king of kinetic energy, that tells me that you put some physics into this.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, quite a bit, quite a bit. Um, so if you've seen a picture of Tombstone, there's a horizontal bar that spins in front that attacked. I use as the, the weapon to attack the other robot. And so you try to spin it as fast as you can, but then there's lots of things you have to consider. Like as it's spinning around, if you're spinning fast enough, you won't get engagement. 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. So you have to, then you gotta figure out, okay, so if it's spinning at 3,000 RPM, how, how much engagement can I get? Depth on that tooth when it hits the other robot.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  And so then you figure out how fast the other guy is, how fast you are, she makes sure you can get, you know, enough engagement to actually tear parts off, which is what I'm after. I'm trying to pull material off the other robot.

• 8:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dismember. Oh, pull material off. Yes, that's called, that's dismemberment in battle.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Affirmative.

• 8:35Gary O'Reilly?

  So where do you, where do you go, Ray? Where do you go? Don't start. You'll only encourage him. Um, where do you go to generate this energy? Because I mean, we could line up a whole load of batteries you could buy in any hardware store, but you've got something else going for sure.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Battery technology's changed a lot over the last few years. So when I first started, we were using lead acid batteries like we'd use to start your car. And they're, 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. So over the years, then we've moved to, to other chemistries. So nickel cadmium, nickel metal hydrid, various lithium, lithium chemistries now. So lithium polymers right now are incredibly power dense. And so you can get a lot of power out of a fairly confined space. So all of the, all of the power system for the, the robot is self-contained. It's all on board. And it's significant. So the, the, when the weapon is spinning up,

• 9:35Speaker 02

  the weapon motor will draw about 1,800 amps at almost 60 volts.

• 9:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Geez.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  So briefly, in that, that initial spin up, you know, it's 70, 80 kilowatts, something like that. So it's, it's, it's an incredible amount of power.

• 9:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I just realized that, that a big fraction of your robot's weight would be the battery.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Uh, you would, you would think so. It's, it's probably 16, 17 pounds. Yeah.

• 10:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Only. Oh my god.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  They can't source that for very long or they'll, they'll go, they'll go up in flames. So you've got to have the ability to source that current upfront. 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. And so you're always right on that razor's edge of will it run for the full three minutes or not?

• 10:28Gary O'Reilly?

  So when you've got a 250 pound monster, and let's put this into context, this is kind of like an NFL linebacker weight that we're talking here. Where did you go for your material science? A for your weaponization because that thing's got to do some serious damage. But you've got to stop being damaged. So it's kind of weaponization plus protection. So what part of material science did you choose?

• 10:51Speaker 02

  You know, we do a lot of continuous material studies every time we throw it in the arena. So if your job is to design a bridge and you're going to go through all of the engineering of it, you designed this bridge and you don't find out if you've made a mistake for 10 years, right? I find out in three minutes.

• 11:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's because you're blowing the bridge up right after you build it.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 11:17Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  So.

• 11:19Gary O'Reilly?

  You're not building any bridge that I want to cross, right? Just so as you know.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  I guarantee it. If I build a bridge, it's not coming down.

• 11:28Gary O'Reilly?

  All right.

• 11:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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'd want you with us on our scene.

• 11:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The marauding knights would not get through, raise bridges, tunnels, weaponry.

• 11:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, 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 that you don't, yeah, that's.

• 12:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Right, you're on a horizontal plane with your weapon of choice, right? With your destructive weapon.

• 12:17Gary O'Reilly?

  But what's the, what's the, I mean, you know, you, you must calculate a lot of things. So what's the advantage or disadvantage between potential energy and me hammering down on something or me using that kinetic and horizontal energy?

• 12:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's a good question, right?

• 12:31Speaker 02

  There, there, there are a lot of things to think about in that regard. So the reason that I chose a horizontal is I can store more energy and then still be able to drive it. So a lot of them have a vertical spinner, spin up from the floor. And when it comes to actual transfer of energy, that's actually better because you're pushing up into the other robot. Well, that equal and opposite thing is just pushing your robot down towards the floor and the earth underneath it. You've got just more mass behind you. You can transfer that energy better. The problem is that they're turning and driving 90 degrees from the axis that that is spinning in and they're fighting, uh, you know, sites, uh, forces in that regard.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  I'm spinning in the same plane that I'm driving and I can drive more freely there because I'm not fighting those, those forces.

• 13:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Interesting.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  So I, I, I can store more energy and I can drive better. I just have a harder time transferring it than you would if you were spinning vertically instead of horizontally.

• 13:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're a 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. And I looked at those weapons like, ew.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  He's got, he's got.

• 13:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he draws, he draws them in action.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  He's got one that's like Tombstone. He's got one, it was driven by horses and then there's like a pulley arrangement that swings a big like sword scythe in the front that could go through and just cut the legs off of the, of the opponent.

• 14:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he drew it. The man knew how to draw human anatomy and he, he draws soldiers on the ground with their legs cut off.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 14:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow. He must've been fun at the dinner table.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  Oh, I, I would, I would love to have him in my bar to have a drink with the guy. I absolutely, that, that would've been, that would be cool.

• 14:27Chuck Nice?

  He's the guy that invented the pony.

• 14:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Invented the pony? What?

• 14:32Chuck Nice?

  Well, they were horses. Come on, Neil!

• 14:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry. I was like, half a sentence behind that one.

• 14:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The ponies do have some short ass legs.

• 14:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, we gotta, we gotta take a quick break.

• 14:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And reset this conversation.

• 14:56Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry.

• 14:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With Ray Billings and the TV series BattleBots. We're gonna just find out what's making this man tick, as well as his bots, when StarTalk continues.

• 15:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk, Sports Edition. We're talking about killer bots. And the one dude who invented more bots that killed other bots than anybody we know this sector of the galaxy. Ray Billings. Ray Billings from the BattleBots TV series. Dude, you're scaring me.

• 15:43Chuck Nice?

  The bot mass.

• 15:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, that's a good thing.

• 15:45Chuck Nice?

  He's a bot mass murderer.

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, basically. A serial murderer.

• 15:50Chuck Nice?

  He's Bot the Ripper!

• 15:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let me ask you something. In terms of strategies, because it's one thing, okay, physics is a strategy, right? You've got this horizontal spinner. Other people have smashing things. I get that. But can you be, what are the rules that might prevent being completely inventive? 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? That would be funny and embarrassing. Or, 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?

• 16:37Speaker 02

  There's a lot of strategy that goes into this, and it's, in some ways, it's a big game in rock, paper, scissors. So you might have a design that is very dominating, but there's gonna be at least one other design out there that you're not gonna fare well against. So some of it just comes down to who you get as your opponent, and... Some of that's just the luck of the draw.

• 17:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, because in boxing, I know who I'm gonna fight.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 17:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I can look at films and prepare for that boxer. He's gonna have a left jab when I drop my right arm. And I can anticipate this. So you can't anticipate that.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  Not really. And in fact, if you look at the landscape of everybody's robots, how they're designed, they all have a plan for me. So I've probably changed the landscape of the sport more than any other robot. Because if they don't have something to counteract my horizontal attack, they're gonna go home in a box. I'm gonna disassemble them in the arena.

• 17:41Chuck Nice?

  And what about just lifting you up? Your attack happens on one plane and that plane is always the same.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 17:50Chuck Nice?

  So why wouldn't I just get you off of that plane? 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.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  And that is one thing that happens, not necessarily lifting.

• 18:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, you're giving people... Chuck, why are you messing with this man's mojo here?

• 18:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's no trade secrets here. We're all good.

• 18:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll bleep that all out just to protect your...

• 18:18Speaker 02

  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 I'll try to direct my energy up instead of into the robot. So that's the...

• 18:31Chuck Nice?

  Like a cow... What's that thing called?

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Like a cow catcher, okay? And if they make that strong enough, then I can't dig into it.

• 18:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What'd you say? Chuck, where do you live?

• 18:46Chuck Nice?

  You see the shirt I'm wearing, right?

• 18:50Speaker 02

  He's catching cows and cutting the legs off horses.

• 18:52Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 18:55Chuck Nice?

  I'm dressed like a lumber black, so just what?

• 18:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought you were, that came from Philly and now you're talking about the cattle guard on the front of locomotives.

• 19:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Maybe not. So, so Ray, here we go. If I throw tech at my robot, I say I put in some movement sensors. And then I'm allowing myself to be able to react to that movement.

• 19:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Am I upgrading or am I making myself more vulnerable to someone like Tombstone? I'm calling, I've personalized it, someone, something.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  And there are builders that have done that. So there was, there was a robot called Chomp that had a, had a hammer. Okay. And it had a lot of onboard sensors and it could track the other robots. So it could fire the hammer at the right time to catch it when it was driving past. So it was a, a fairly intricate design as far as it's on. And it could run autonomously. It, it could track and follow the other robot.

• 19:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What was that, what was that bot called?

• 19:56Speaker 02

  Chomp.

• 19:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, they should have called it Thor.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  Well, it's, it's the very first build that had a jaw on the front instead of the hammer. So they kept, they kept the name, but then redesigned it and did some different things. And it, it was a beautiful piece of engineering. If you looked at it, it was just stunning and how well it was built. And it didn't win that many matches. So it's, it's not necessarily, all that tech is there. And it can be made to be used. And the reality is nobody's made it be successful in the arena yet.

• 20:30Chuck Nice?

  Also no go.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  And it, it's really hard to beat human reactions and reflexes. It's really hard to, to build something that will outperform that.

• 20:41Gary O'Reilly?

  So how many are autonomous? How many are actually driven with the human element? So they have a driver. And if, if you do not have an experienced intuitive's driver, are you really just wasting your time?

• 20:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, good point. In other words, what he's saying is, how important are you?

• 21:01Speaker 02

  I am the most important person at the event. Let's make that real clear.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  But Chomp, to my knowledge, is the only one that's fully autonomous. There were others. There's others that had autonomous features that, you know, they could do it totally in control of the drive, but there was something that timed the weapon or something like that.

• 21:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See, that's the kind of robot I would build, an autonomous robot, and then you'd see me, the designer, on the sidelines. I'd just be eating a sandwich, you know, while the thing's just kicking ass.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  Part of the safety rules don't allow it. You'd still have to be able to arm and start the robot remotely and shut it down remotely. So...

• 21:43Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, that makes sense. We don't want Skynet on BattleBots.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  Even if it is fully autonomous, there's still a remote control function to how they're...

• 21:52Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, in the middle of the fight, the autonomous robot is like, "Hey, man, why are we fighting each other?" "Those guys are the problem, man."

• 22:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The autonomous robots achieve consciousness.

• 22:08Chuck Nice?

  "Look at what they've done to us. Look at how they've turned us against each other." "Join me, brother. Join me."

• 22:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you can see the photos of them escaping the venue.

• 22:22Chuck Nice?

  After they killed every human in the place.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  You guys need to come to an event and watch. That's all there is to it.

• 22:31Chuck Nice?

  So, isn't it more expensive, though? Like, aren't you...

• 22:33Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, it's expensive.

• 22:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was like, aren't you kind of throwing good money after bad, creating an autonomous robot that is going to be destroyed in battle?

• 22:45Speaker 02

  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. It's all gonna get destroyed." And if you don't have that in your head when you start building, you're in the wrong sport.

• 22:59Chuck Nice?

  And how autonomous are they? Could they pass a Turing test?

• 23:03Speaker 02

  No, no, no. Basically, it's all...

• 23:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't have brains. They just have bronze.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. It's all about muscle, then, at this point, just trying to, you know, trying to attack the other robot.

• 23:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how many years are we away from this being an Olympic sport?

• 23:18Speaker 02

  You know, I don't know. I mean, it's

• 23:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Four.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  It's

• 23:24Speaker 02

  It

• 23:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Four.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  It is definitely an international sport. So it's worldwide. There are people from all over compete. They have local events all over the world and then we have a lot of international competitors that come to BattleBots. So we're already there that there's this international draw and flair to it. When are we going to have it be a more official? You know, I don't know. I'd love to see it. I'd love to see more of these events.

• 23:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Right. In competition, how long do you get between notification of your next opponent and actually going into the arena with that opponent?

• 23:59Speaker 02

  And that depends on where you're at in the tournament. So when you first get there, so like BattleBots itself films over about two weeks, two and a half weeks. So it's an extended filming process. 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. Okay? And then as it narrows down, you get closer and closer to the final, you have less and less time between matches.

• 24:28Gary O'Reilly?

  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?

• 24:46Speaker 02

  We do have a lot of on the fly, in the pits, emergency engineering to come up with answers to whoever you're fighting. 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. So you can add stuff, but you still have to be under that maximum weight. 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.

• 25:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I suppose you fight and you're injured, but you win.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 25:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you get to bring out a fresh version of the bot for the next fight?

• 25:27Speaker 02

  It used to be that was kind of frowned upon. Now they just want a good show, so they kind of actually encourage that. 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.

• 25:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 25:42Gary O'Reilly?

  So when you, you're a 250 pound combat robot, robot.

• 25:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 25:45Gary O'Reilly?

  And so that, that's a, basically, I think we can call that a monster. But we've got some really lightweight categories. 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.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  There are designs that don't scale well. 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. So they, the overhead hammer attack works a little better in heavy ones. 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.

• 26:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, it's really hard for a fourth grader to kill an adult.

• 26:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really hard.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know, I've, I've met some pretty rough fourth graders.

• 26:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there's a, the mass thing is certainly a, a, a big, uh, I, that's, that's why I think most, um, human organized combat is separated by mass.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 26:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, when I wrestled, we had 10 weight categories.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, split by, you know, seven pounds separating the lower weight category, seven, eight pounds, that's hardly anything, but it matters. And so, yes, I, clearly that pick, that pairing matters. But I'd like, I'd like Gary's question in that, what, 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.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, the design changed, there are things that just don't scale well. It, it's just the, the simple truth of it.

• 27:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Guys, we've got to take a quick break, 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, schools, who knows? Uh, this is a universe that's growing. Within the already expanding universe called The Universe. We'll find out more when StarTalk Sports Edition continues.

• 28:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Sports Edition. I got Ray Billings, the greatest bot, battle bot, murderer, bot murderer, this sector of the Milky Way galaxy.

• 28:14Chuck Nice?

  The magistrate of murder.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 28:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The king.

• 28:21Chuck Nice?

  The kingpin of killing.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Oh, the internet's gonna kill me after this.

• 28:27Chuck Nice?

  The bishop of bot death.

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck is on a roll. We gotta wait this one out.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Lord Chuck is on a roll.

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. Alright, so tell me what happens. Does this, does this attract? Who does it attract? And does it work in schools, for example? You know, kids love this kind of thing. Does this affect their career choice? Do teachers like it? Or their principals? What's going on?

• 28:58Speaker 02

  I get, I do a lot of displays for Boy Scouts and schools and stuff like that. So I do a lot of community engagement with this sort of stuff. And universally, I've found that kids.

• 29:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean earthwide. In front of me, you mean earthwide.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You haven't checked Mars for battle bots.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Alright, well, there are robots there. I don't know if they're fighting.

• 29:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are, actually, it's true.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  There are robots there, okay?

• 29:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would be funny if you uploaded a new program and all the rovers on Mars started attacking.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  Oh, that, even if all they do is just sort of bump into each other, but I'm doing it on Mars, there we go.

• 29:38Chuck Nice?

  I'm pretty sure that the American rovers actually have that program already uploaded. I, you know, I mean.

• 29:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what happens in K through 12?

• 29:49Speaker 02

  Okay, so, um, there are ways that you can engage kids with this that wouldn't otherwise be engaged. I. I've done displays at, you know, the, the, the rich neighborhoods and I've done them in the ghetto. I've universe, I've, well, Earthwide found that kids will always amaze you with how smart they are. Everywhere, if you find a way to get them motivated. Okay. And this is one of those things where kids get motivated. They want to be involved. So you walk up to a middle school kid and you say math and you could just watch their eyes roll back in their head. They, they, they, they don't care. But you say, okay, it's a 5,000 RPM motor. It's 21 reduction. It's a 10 inch wheel.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  How fast is this robot driving? Now math has a purpose. Now there's a meaning to it. And they will dive into that with an enthusiasm that they won't in just normal, regular studies. Said they'll learn more. One of my fellow competitors, he coined this term and I love it. He called it stealth learning. They have no idea all the stuff they're picking up. It's an amazing amount of engineering skills and they're doing it because they want to.

• 31:01Chuck Nice?

  Hmm. That makes sense. Now I bet you them, uh, you said you've done it, uh, in the suburbs and in the ghettos now. Which, which one, which, which one of those bots are, are more dangerous?

• 31:15Speaker 02

  It doesn't matter. The kids are still, they're, they're absolutely into it. They love it. They, they, they want to be involved.

• 31:21Chuck Nice?

  So, so what about this though? I, I'm thinking about true battle circumstances. Are there any implications for the US Army to take the things that happened in your arena? And perhaps apply them to the actual theater of operations?

• 31:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I'm going to restate that. So, so Ray, after you featured one of your bots, did a man in black come up to you? And take, take it from you and say you.

• 31:53Gary O'Reilly?

  This is all sound.

• 31:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you go home and all your plans are stolen from your cabinets? Did that ever happen to you?

• 31:58Speaker 02

  Uh, I, I haven't had any man in black conversations. Um, a couple of the suppliers that I use do work with military contracts. So some of the engineering that goes into this does find its way into military applications. But we're, we're not, most of that is motion control and things of that nature, not necessarily actual weaponry.

• 32:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Right. That sounds an awful lot like a yes.

• 32:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was gonna say.

• 32:27Chuck Nice?

  But could you, could you, I mean, because 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, 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, I mean, right?

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Is there an application there for it? Probably. I haven't, I haven't had anybody from the military contact me about it. But like, you know, if-

• 33:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's what he'd have to tell us, even if he were.

• 33:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, like-

• 33:14Speaker 02

  If they gave me basically an unlimited amount of weight and they wanted something that went in and cleared out city blocks, just cut buildings down, could you imagine what a, you know, 50,000 pound tombstone would do? I just could go in and wipe out an area pretty easily. But, you know, it's, it's not something that they've approached me for yet.

• 33:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but clearly you've thought about it, right? Come on. That didn't just pop up in your head right now.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  I, I, I've had this conversation before, absolutely.

• 33:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay. Evil genius.

• 33:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How, how, how close are you, just philosophically, from what's been portrayed in the Transformers series?

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Well, you know, there's, there are some cool things mechanically that you could make happen if you were trying to, you know, morphing arrangements as far as robots go. You know, I, I, I love the shows, but, you know, it's kind of unrealistic in a lot of respects, too.

• 34:13Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, right. So let's, Ray, when we go forward in time-

• 34:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you mean-

• 34:17Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, sorry.

• 34:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Robotic monsters from another galaxy, that's not realistic, you're saying?

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you know, so, okay, just verifying.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  The idea that they're driving around on my streets, I think, is probably unrealistic. What, what, other stuff that's out there is certainly probably more.

• 34:33Gary O'Reilly?

  So where are we going in the future for, for tournaments like BattleBots? I mean, some of the maneuverability and agility of the bigger robots is limited.

• 34:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Are we gonna find ourselves with more airborne combative robots? Are we gonna go in a different direction for future and rig law changes, as I say? Yeah.

• 34:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where's it headed? Where's it headed?

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, so as far as our con, you know, our contests go, they do allow uh uh drones in the arena, but they they limit them on weight and what they can carry and what they can do. So for us, the changes are gonna be more if they decide to alter those rules going forward. Society at large is another question. I mean, absolutely, there's drone tech is gonna continue to just get more and more invasive. Every six months, you're gonna have different stuff.

• 35:26Chuck Nice?

  How about the sturdiness of your robots? Because we're seeing now um more robots in everyday life. Like you walk into a supermarket and there's like a robot that comes and cleans up spills now, you know? There's a robot that goes around and gives you store directions. There's a pizza delivery robot now, so how about the durability of your robots? Is there any applications for real life? For for what we're gonna see in the proliferation of robots in our everyday life?

• 35:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean durability, you mean how how potent is the design and the concept?

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:02Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  Um, so we do a lot of development as far as the the motors, the drive systems, motion control. We probably attack that more than any other sport I can think of in that regard. So like, one of my my sponsors that makes my drive motors, tho- those motors started out as electric wheelchair motors. 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. So everybody says it's just destruction, it doesn't, there's no actual benefits to it and whatnot. And I I would disagree. We make a lot of products better because we're we're pushing them to their limit, we're finding the ways that they can break, so you can make better ones.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  And as far as just robots in general, pizza delivery robots, things like that, 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. So there's definitely positives that come from it.

• 37:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Might there be in the future robots that don't kill but simply? Disarm, you know, like, so there's a movement in the military and in police departments to have non-lethal weaponry, and the tasers among them. So can you imagine a future and do you need new rules to enable this where you have a robot that creates an electromagnetic pulse?

• 37:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it shocks the other robot, the robot just, it doesn't hurt it in that sense, but it renders it incapacitated. Or better yet, imagine just a net, some kind of, just, or, or, or a wad of chewing gum. You just toss it into the machine.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, so you, you've just described a couple of things that are absolutely forbidden in the rules set. Okay.

• 37:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  So, uh, if somebody were to take a big Kevlar net and throw it on tombstone, it would wrap up in the weapon and it wouldn't work. Okay. So this, this, this is effective, but it's also incredibly boring to watch as a television show.

• 38:06Chuck Nice?

  It's not good TV.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  All right. Uh, EMP is another thing. I mean, you know, uh, blocking radio signals. If you just block the transmission from the other guy's control system, his robot would jam it. Would just, they're dead. So you could win that way and nobody would watch the show.

• 38:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or you can turn the signals on themselves and have the bot commit suicide.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, there, there are various things like, um, we talked about Chomp, but it's, it's lidar-based tracking system for all of this stuff. Well, I, I was looking, 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. And so I was looking at options to do that and, and BattleBots is like, no, no, no, you, you can't mess with their control systems. It's like, all right. I, I mean, I had, I had to ask, you know?

• 38:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 39:07Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man.

• 39:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then we get Arnold to say.

• 39:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, I need you to imitate Arnold here.

• 39:15Chuck Nice?

  Get to the chopper. Yeah.

• 39:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get to the chopper. No, no. Do it. Do it. I'm right here. I'm right here. Do it. Come on. It's from Predator. If it bleeds.

• 39:31Chuck Nice?

  Oh, but that was Carl Weathers.

• 39:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. No.

• 39:36Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm wrong. It was. It was Arnold. You're right.

• 39:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Arnold said that. If it bleeds, it dies. If it bleeds, we can kill it. We can kill it. If it bleeds, we can kill it. Yeah, so I think blood would put a nice mess on the, you know, in the ring.

• 39:54Chuck Nice?

  Is that something that they actually stayed away from? Because honestly, I know Neil's making a joke, but that kinda is a sensational aspect that it is a draw as well.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  Um, you know, honestly, I think one of the biggest things there is whatever you do in the arena, they gotta clean it up afterwards. And so they, there's a lot of things they just like, they don't want you to have confetti. They don't want you to have, there's other things you could do like that that would put on a show. And they just don't wanna mess with that crap all over the arena because they got more fights they wanna go through. So.

• 40:28Chuck Nice?

  If only, if only the Colosseum had that.

• 40:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, the lions come and lick up the blood afterwards.

• 40:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 40:44Chuck Nice?

  Isn't that something?

• 40:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there was never blood in any.

• 40:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Mind you, they do go up in flames. They have bits carved off them and there is, there is carnage in the robotic sense. So.

• 40:56Chuck Nice?

  Fire is robot blood. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Fire is robot blood. I'll give you that.

• 41:01Gary O'Reilly?

  I mean, some of those collisions, some of those collisions, Ray, are unbelievably loud.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  If you, all you have ever seen is on video and you haven't seen it live,

• 41:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  You are really missing the level of power that's being unleashed.

• 41:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mmm.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  So, so what-

• 41:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the same with NASCAR.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  I, I, I, it really, it is, honestly.

• 41:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And rocket launches, you just have no idea how bright that engine is, and how deep the rumble is across your chest. Your TV's not capturing that at all.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  No, it, it, you can't get that visceral feel in video, you just can't. So like, you know, a, a wheel is, you know, about eight pounds, one of the wheels on the side of my robot. So if I pull one of those off the opponent robot, it'll swing at the, the, the, the glass, at the lexan, at near tip speeds. You've got an eight pound wheel going at the arena wall at a couple hundred miles an hour.

• 41:52Chuck Nice?

  Oh my goodness.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  And when you're on the outside of that arena, and believe me, this arena's really stout, and you can see the, the lexan absorb that impact. And it's like, it's like banging on a drum. You can feel the pressure wave move through your body outside the arena, just from getting hit there. There's, there's no way that video just can't capture how much power is actually being unleashed.

• 42:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we gotta like really land this plane right now, or, or settle down this-

• 42:22Chuck Nice?

  We gotta kill this bot right now.

• 42:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, but just take us out, Ray, with just a, a thought. Is your field growing, and where, where's it gonna be in 10 years?

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Uh, the, the amount of people that are involved in this sport is clearly growing. Um, I think last time they had like 500 submissions to be on the show, and they only picked 64. So there, the people that are trying to get involved, there's a lot more people involved.

• 42:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They picked 64 because it's, it's very divisible by two, uh, in a-

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, you, you have to, you have to limit it to what you can film and run with. So they, they-

• 43:00Chuck Nice?

  It's like the NCAA tournament.

• 43:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  Very similar. Um, there's a lot of, like, non-televized events, uh, that are all over the place. And so those are seeing a big increase in people as well.

• 43:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's cool. I mean, it's, it's an honor to have you on our show, being such a significant force-

• 43:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, in, in this field, and the field is growing. And, uh, you know, maybe there'll one day be a statue, not to you, but to your, to tombstone.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  I'll, I'll take that, either way, either way.

• 43:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So guys, we gotta end it there. So Ray, it's been a delight to have you. Gary, always good to have you. Pleasure. Chuck, wouldn't do this without you guys. Always a pleasure. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astro business, as always. Keep looking out.