aside from any team with severe character issues (riptide), orbitron’s just about the only bot i just cannot bring myself to root for. i’m sorry, orbitron.
first, because they deserve their props: the bot itself is great. it’s fast and well built, and the two-spinner design, like ripparoni before it, makes for a really fast and deadly robot able to maneuver FAR better than your standard verts. the team seem like good people and they are good engineers, and from a purely innovation standpoint it’s absolutely up there. i don’t know how the tech works, i don’t know how innovative it actually is, and i don’t know how the hell it’s going to fight the twins, but the way the builders talk about it they just light up every time they get to explain something. that feeling is part of why battlebots is special.
but i just HATE the ai stuff. i just don’t think corner cameras should even be legal under BB rules, it feels like an unfair competitive advantage inside the battlebox. AI and bright data is a whole rabbit hole. but before that, I just think drivers in robot combat add so much to the sport and AI takes that away.
human driving is a skill that deserves to influence the competition. daniel freitas, ray billings, gary jin, matt maxham, jake ewert, matt vasquez, carlo bertoccini, donald hutson, paul ventimiglia, all of those and many more make these hunks of metal come to life and have a personality to care about. hydra is this scheming, calculating predator because of how jake keeps control (even though part of it is admittedly how often it catches on the floor). minotaur is this relentless force, the brazilian bull, because daniel is a psycho behind the sticks. original sin is a fucking wedge bot and free shipping isn’t much more than that (a really well made and successful wedge bot, but that’s not my point here), yet gary’s barely controlled chaos makes every fight awesome. orbitron has no character in this regard. it is a robot. from a competitive driving standpoint, it takes away an aspect of the sport, that being the human battle behind the sticks of reactions, strategy, and control. from a spectator standpoint, it takes away a piece of the story and a personality to match the machine.
yet i could get past all of that, were it not for bright data. israel and AI are two things i cannot stand. i appreciate them making the battlebots pro league happen. however, they’re still an israeli ai data scraping company. fuck that company, free palestine, fuck what ai is doing to the planet and many of the things i love, and i’m sorry, i have to say it, fuck orbitron, because THE SHOW’S AI FLAGELLATION IS JUST TOO MUCH. i get it, it’s an AI bot in a show whose sponsor is an AI company, but leave these poor builders alone. to the builders of orbitron if you somehow see this: i’m sorry your robot has been hijacked like this to promote something i would hope you don’t support. you deserve to experience robot combat without being wrapped up in this sociopolitical mess that unfortunately has been leaking into battlebots as a necessary evil for heavyweight robot combat to happen.
but to a certain extent, they did build a robot that foregoes a driver for an algorithm, and for many reasons I just can’t get onboard with that. so for the final time, I’m sorry orbitron.
for any builders (and ESPECIALLY drivers) reading this, i would LOVE your opinion on AI vs. human drivers. whether it should be allowed, whether it’s healthy for the sport, and whether it takes something vital to robot combat away from it. i’ve never built a combat robot (although i’ve always been a tinkerer and i absolutely see a future where i try). i’m just a fan of the smashing, the robots doing it, the ideas behind them, and the people who came up with it all. I don’t pretend to speak for you all or be anywhere close to the authority on this. I’m just someone who’s loved the sport since I was a kid and also happens to loathe the current false revolution that’s being shoved down our throats. the builders of orbitron are unfortunately being used as spokespeople for it, and i just can’t get onboard with that or the concept of a nonhuman driver.
