TONIGHT: Inventor Prototypes Battlebot in Second Life -- Then Creates it in Real Life to Fight On Discovery Channel's Battlebots!

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Above: Sharky in SL and in RL (images courtesy Constantine of Nano Station Technologies

Tonight at 8pm on the Discovery Channel (check your local listings!), there's a chance for Second Life users to cheer on a hometown champion: Episode 6, third fight of the night, it's Sharko (woot woot!) versus Slap Box (boo! hiss!) on the popular Battlebots reality TV show. 

Sharko is the creation of Edward Robinson, known in Second Life as Artorius Constantine, owner of the Nano Station Technologies store.  For the last few years, Constantine has not only been making a real life living from his SL inventions (animesh roleplay bots and so on), but taking what he's learned from the battlebots he's made for Second Life fights, and applying what he's learned to design real life battlebots:

"I have built a slew of failures in SL," he tells me, laughing. "Only a few make it past SL to RL, as it costs around $20k each to build [a real battlebot]."

For instance, he previously designed a battlebot dubbed Excelsior on paper, then built it in Second Life -- and only then saw a problem with its design:

"I hadn't noticed there wasn't enough room for the lower drive motor to slide in the frame," he explains. "It just wouldn't go in. It looked great assembled in the drawing, but there was no way to get the motor in or out. If I had built that as drawn it would have been a waste of thousands of dollars in materials and time. The SL model saved me a huge mistake on that one because I could see the motor wouldn't go in place through the frame."

Tweaked and finally ready to wreak destruction, Constantine took Excelsior to fight in China, at King of Bots II.

As a prototyping platform, Second Life shines most for him when figuring out how individual pieces of the battle bot will fit together:

"It takes a lot of parts in a small package," he says. "In Second Life, I made all the individual components and can easily reconfigure them into different frames and test beds. It would cost me a small fortune to do that in real life. I can test different motor sizes and gearing systems with a click. I want to fit in the biggest one I can and at $350 each starting price, I can't afford to buy dozen motors just for size testing. You also have to be able to get to things to repair them. It has to be assembled in an order. I mock up frames and find errors in my design that save me tons of time prior to RL assembly. If it doesn't fit in SL it won't fit in RL."

He spends weeks of trial and error on this process. Fighting his battle bots in Second Life against others can also lead to improvements:   

"[It's] perfect for setting the center of gravity; my bots are mostly two wheelers so that's tantamount. I wish we had better physics." 

As for Sharky, which will make its way from Second Life onto the Discovery Channel tonight:

"The original design had a sharply pointed nose in the SL version that I didn't think would work in RL but worked great in SL. I changed that for the first RL build, was proven wrong and went back to the original design for this latest one. I also changed it from a spinner as originally designed to being a flipper/ control bot. But that was just because sharks that don't bite suck."

Sharky as featured on the Discovery channel show page

Real life being real life, taking Sharky from SL to Battlebots came with its own unique challenges, especially during a global pandemic:

"It's an insane amount of work for 2 weeks," he says. "Fight, fix, fight and fix all day every day. We were the first post-COVID lock down production and tested all the COVID rules for safe theatre. Over 1000 people got together for 2 weeks and not one single new case or transfer instance of COVID. It was a pain but worth it."

Constantine says he gave a shout-out to Second Life in the post-match interview. "I really love SL for designing robots," he tells me. "I wish more people would understand it's a useful tool." 

As for whether Sharky wins or not, he does not say -- so you'll just have to tune in.

Images courtesy Constantine. Hat tip: /Second Life on Reddit.

Comments

[DevinVaughn resident]

It's robot Fightin Time! This so cool. I had no idea. I'm a rabid BattleBot fan. This is just amazing. I love this. Thanks for the story about it. Watching BattleBots right now. Woooo! Good luck Sharko!

[sirhc desantis]

Now this is something the Lab should be highlighting - and even throw a bit of sponsorship to
(hope utoob link is ok here)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMe5HjK7eOE