AME Students Score Knockouts at Battlebot Destruct-a-Thon

Engineering Capstone Team 23037 scored back-to-back knockouts with its 250-pound robot at the inaugural Battlebots: Destruct-a-Thon competition in Las Vegas. On May 6 and 7, the team of six University of Arizona engineering students drove the stingray-shaped BattleBot "Disarray" to undefeated victory. The students are now applicants for the BattleBots World Championship.

But a fighting robot isn’t the only result of Team 23037's Interdisciplinary Capstone project. In addition to the team's BattleBot, they laid the foundation for the Wildcat Robotics club, inspiring future engineering students to get in the arena.

Team 23037 consists of new mechanical engineering graduates Nick Sivertson, Al Hurworth and Alex Wait, aerospace engineering major Mathias Ramirez, as well as electrical and computer engineering alums Yousuf Choudhary and Karson Knudson. 

The Wildcat Robotics club is already designing two new BattleBots for future engineering students. Following in Disarray’s trail, the new BattleBots are also inspired by animals: the 12-pound "Gila" and the 3-pound "Buzz Kill," both of which will sport vertical spinner weapons. These “first year” robots are estimated for completion this summer.

“One of the big things about the project is that we wanted to build a BattleBot, but at the same time, we wanted to leave a lasting thing at the university,” Hurworth said in an interview with El Indie. “I really wanted to make sure that other students coming in that are interested in robotics have the opportunity to learn and grow.”