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 their BattleBot, the team laid the foundation for the Wildcat Robotics club, inspiring future engineering students to get in the arena.

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

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.

Team advisor and ECE Regents Professor Michael Marcellin says this is the first time he’s seen a student group set on creating a club in addition to working on a capstone project. Team 23037 received funding from Marcellin as well as Craig M. Berge Dean of the College of Engineering David Hahn, through the Craig M. Berge Dean’s Fund.