Inside UCLA's Boelter Hall, the university's Battlebots team works on several categories of robots, including 60-pound and 3-pound drum spinners, "thwackbots," and horizontal spinners—all combat robots, with both drive and weapon systems—for arena-style battlescapes.

This is the primary project of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) student section at UCLA. The team comprises mostly mechanical engineering undergraduates, although all disciplines are welcome to join. Everyone learns how to conceptualize, draft, and project plan, gets hands-on experience with industrial machining tools (mill and lathe), and becomes proficient with Finite Element Analysis and CAD (Computer-Aided Design).

One of the UCLA ASME teams just returned from this year's RoboGames—the "Olympics of Robotics"—in the Bay Area where, after a tough competition, they reached the third round with their combat robot, "Wedgie." This is the furthest they've gotten so far, and now they want to regroup and start planning for 2019.

Here's the team talking about Wedgie, explaining how it works, some of the challenges they faced, and what they hope to build for 2019. We also saw them take the robot for a test out in the courtyard behind their workshop (without the weapon running for safety reasons).

Seen in the video are the following students:

Ryan Poon, President UCLA ASME, 3rd year Mechanical Engineering

Kevin Chang, Technical VP, 4th year Mechanical Engineering

Michael Cui, Battlebots Lead, 3rd year Mechanical Engineering

Calvin Shih, Battlebots Lead, 3rd year, Mechanical Engineering

Joshua Valerio, FADE Lead, 3rd year, Mechanical Engineering

Sam Gessow, Flagship Team Member, 2nd year, Mechanical Engineering

If you want to see the UCLA ASME Battlebots team in action, with whatever combat robot they build between now and then, mark your calendar for RoboGames 2019.

Further Reading