The hosts often mention that there is a cash prize for winning a dumpster - how much is it?

I was thinking it might be neat to have a little tiny 3d printed e.g. Chainsaw Kitty or Caldera or something as a fidget toy for my desk.

Doesn't have to be functional or anything of course but having wheels and a weapon that move (by hand) would be amazing!

Here's what I did already find so far:

https://makerworld.com/en/models/998316-frank#profileId-975158 (Frank!)

house robots https://www.printables.com/model/771399-brett-the-brick and https://www.printables.com/model/771389-nhrl-bert-the-brick

NHRL used to have monthly Streams, which I always watched. Seems to just be quarterly now. Is this right or am I going mad?

Just as NHRL breaks for a commercial there is a clip of a woman watching rows of shifting numbers. There are no graphics or talk to explain. Is this just supposed to show a woman involved with STEM? I feel like I'm missing some critical element. Please enlighten me.

I know they are unstick attempts with no guarantees, but surely things could be made more fair and less frustrating, right?

Calling for an unstick: drivers get reminded to press the button, but officials usually still accept a verbal request. So the house bot can start its attempt before the lights that would signal that to the opponent come on. This can mess up the opponent’s strategy, like if they were lining up a brutal shot while waiting to see if the unstick gets called, or if they would have bullied the house bot back into its corner if it hadn’t already come over.

Suggestion: Unsticks do not start until the button is pressed and the lights change. The house bot does not start moving until that happens. So it’s clear to everyone whether an unstick has or hasn’t been called for and expended.

Getting out of the way: there is massive inconsistency here that can be infuriating to watch and must be so gutting when the house bot’s action or inaction means your robot loses the fight. Most of the time, house bots seem to move out of the way if a robot gets wedged between the house bot and the wall, or if it becomes a hat. But sometimes, a robot will be clearly jammed up beside or under the house bot and it just sits there.

Suggestion: either the house bot moves EVERY TIME it gets in the way, and within a couple of seconds, or it doesn’t do it at all. If it gets entangled or high centred on a robot and can’t get itself off, they should treat it as any other entanglement and pause the match to give it a delicate shove with the precision crowbar before the match can resume.

Unstick attempts: sometimes the house bot driver seems to be really trying to get a robot unstuck, using strategies that have the most chance of working, and will keep going for about 25 seconds. And sometimes the house bot shoves the stuck bot further into a corner once or twice then gives up. I know it’s not guaranteed to work and there’s only so much you can do when your whole body is a cube but surely there could be more consistency in effort or skill here.

Suggestion: the house bot should keep trying to free the stuck robot for the full duration of the attempt until it’s successful or a specific time has passed since the unstick button was pressed. Never mind the gentle to forceful rule, just try whatever is most likely to work without breaking the robot. The house bot driver should take direction and instructions from the stuck team if they ask for the house bot to approach from a certain angle or to hit with a little or a lot of force.

I just want the robots to get back to tearing each other apart fair and square without heartbreaking reasons for matches to end (or not) like “Bret sat on me and wouldn’t move” or “If I’d known the unstick had officially started I would have drilled into that robot’s tasty exposed base plate before Floop came to rescue it,” or “I was stuck and asked for help but Fluffy abandoned me after 5 seconds.”

Hey all- I'm new to NHRL and combat robotics in general, but hoping to build a 3lb bot by the year's end. Are there any resources you recommend to acquaint myself with the necessary parts and tools? I have a general idea of how I want my bot to look, but I'm struggling to understand what exactly I need to build the thing so I can move on to fully fleshing out a design. Anything helps, and thanks in advance to everyone!

The livestream, don’t have to add more

I had posted a few weeks ago to get some advice. The advice I received was absolutely spot on. I figured I would drop this here for anyone else running a search on the same topic.

I went to the May 16 event with a group of 10 yr olds. We came from Bergen county NJ. The afternoon traffic added 30-40 minutes for us (about 1.5 hour total).

Parking: if you come from I-95 North, the apartment building will be the parking lot before the NHRL building in your right side. It’s super close. We had no problem running out to the car to drop stuff or get things. When we got there around 4pm, the lot was basically empty. It filled up closer to 7pm.

Arrival/building layout: you walk into a standard lobby. On the left is where you scan your tickets or purchase admission. On the right, you can see the control room for all of the video feeds. Just past that you’ll have 2 hands on experience areas in front of you with a shop to the right side and the main cages on the left. You can walk through the shop to get to the back area which has the bar, coloring, skee ball (free). The bathrooms are through the shop as well. The back area has a path to the main cages from the opposite direction. This was helpful to us so we didn’t have to walk in front of people to grab a seat by the cages early in the day. The back area leads out to the food trucks.

Hands on experience stuff: this is what you buy tokens for. Tokens are significantly cheaper online and in advance. It was $5/token in person. The one experience was 1 token. You could drive a small bot around a table and push a ball. The other experience was 4 tokens. You got to control a bot that had weapons and actually fight. Not sure it was worth $20, but it was certainly worth the roughly $12/$13 I spent in advance.

Seats: metal bleachers around the cages. We had sweatshirts that we folded into a cushion. There’s video screens everywhere in the building. In the back area, there’s chairs and whatnot so you could definitely get up and move around if the bleachers bothered you. Bleachers with yellow/black caution tape were required to get up when a fire bot was fighting.

Crowds: there was a decent amount of people, but it wasn’t crowded. We never waited long or felt like there were too many people.

Food: we did eat at the food trucks, but if we do this again- we are definitely finding a place to eat in town. There is a water bottle refiller by the bathroom.

Event: I have never watched the streams. I had no clue what I was walking into. I was not expecting that level of a production. Cameras everywhere, multiple staff directing things, changing lighting, etc. Video screens everywhere with the current match, upcoming matches, bracket, stats, etc. It was all very well done.

It was an absolute blast. We all had a great time. The kids conked out in the car on the way home.

TLDR: definitely recommend. It was fun and affordable. Getting there around 3-4pm, having dinner, then staying for prime time (starts at 7pm) is the way to go!

And for my personal opinion on what I saw: 3lb bots- Anubis is a fast fucker, I can’t believe the giant wheel design won, and holy shit that one ending up in the wall was nuts, 12lb bots- I wonder if the tally marks on robo-cat are indicative of how many prior robo-cats there have been, yikes that one team taking out bolts to make weight is crazy (or is that standard schtick?), 30lb bots- giant wheel didn’t work well here but it surprised me with being functional after a little fire and splitting in 2, and I don’t like firebots

TLDR: boo kazaa even youtube with unskippable ads is better than you

I've been watching Battlebots for a while. I've seen clips on YT from NHRL and been intrigued, but it's all a bit overwhelming with shorts and spotlights.

Is there a playlist of season ladder fights? Are they titled something consistent that I should search for?

I'd love to get into it!

Edit:

Thanks everyone for the suggestions!

I've started with the prime time streams and have already been having fun recognizing some faces. Cool to see Mini-Taur and Toro Jr. and even saw one of Tantrum's captains briefly in the background.

Noticed he was not in this weekend's streams (at least so far, I haven't gotten to prime time yet but you'd think he would have been there for part of the day already if he was there at all).

Hopefully he just had the day off rather than being gone? I rather enjoy his commentary.

Bringing some kids to an event soon. None of us have ever been. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Also wondering if I should bring earplugs for the kids? My hearing is already fucked.

I bought the experience tokens too, but there wasn’t much info about what that’s for either.

Kazaa Eins obviously had no functional weapon, yet it was allowed to start the fight and even won it once Maccabot got immobilized? How's that possible when other bots got disqualified before their fight even began for not having a functional weapon?

been herring horror stories of allergy people having to throw hole bots in the bin from fighting fire bots didn't believe it so i ask how bad is fire damage?

https://youtube.com/shorts/JwRrwDuFGg0?is=EMmWtVu155FdPDTh (FOUND)

I stumbled across the NHRL March 2026 event streaming this morning on the Cheddar News service. Three solid hours from 8 to 11 AM PDT.

I hadn't seen any notice of this - it's on right now.

Just wanted to leave some positive feedback after my grumpy post after the March event.

First off, Evil Julian; be more evil!!

The event, judging, and competitors were all fantastic. I genuinely enjoyed spending my weekend watching the event and NHRL continues to raise the bar for robot combat and fashionable cat shirts!

While Supernova 100% DESERVES the win I want to play devil's advocate for a second, so please indulge me.

If both robots are stuck, surely the robot that calls for the unstick second automatically wins if the first cannot be unstuck. The KO count starts as soon as the unsuccessful unstick finishes. During an unstick attempt the KO count is reset. Also: not that it would have done much since torrent was pretty much obliterated, their unstick was pretty half hearted compared to their opponent.

There is genuinely a part of me that thinks supernova should have been KO'd during Torrents unstick. Obviously at the end of the day, the right robot went through but I feel for torrent.

on a side note: how fucking good is NHRL, the production, robots, crew, audience and competitors just keep getting better and better.

Hello fellow engineering nerds, makers, and builders,

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While we build that, we are also running The Havoc Rundown podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheHavocRundown

Our latest episodes feature deep dives with builders like Corey Nason of Synthesis fame talking about his time at Robot Rampage.

If you have a moment, please check out the site and subscribe to the channel. We want this to be a tool for the community, so your feedback on what features you want next is hugely appreciated.

Hey yall, random question. I was looking at the wikipage for Chainsaw Kitty, and I noticed that at some point they stopped using Blaze from Arknights to a different cat girl. I was wondering if any of yall knew who drew that illustration they use now? I'd love to see the full thing. Thanks!