Battlebots VII - Post-Fight Report #2: Emulsifier vs Fusion, First Time For Everything

Up until today, all posts on this blog were by Adam Wrigley. Today's post is written by Matt Bores, captain of Emulsifier:

It’s finally time! After all the hard work over the last few months and years of refining this design at a smaller scale, we finally get to put it to the test against one of the most vicious opponents in the field – Team Whyachi’s Fusion.

It really didn’t occur to us how much we didn’t want to fight Fusion, until the match-up was announced. The dual weapon design really makes it difficult to strategize against. If we chose to run forks, they would immediately rip them off with the horizontal rotor and potentially destroy the front of our frame. If we chose to run the titanium wedge we knew we couldn’t get under their forks and it would get torn up by their vertical weapon. It seemed like a lose-lose proposition and we would have to find a way to win this match without winning the configuration game, so we chose the titanium wedge to protect our front end and decided we were going to come out swinging, while trying our best to avoid head to head confrontations with their forks.

Trying to get around another robot is much easier said than done, and the first several exchanges in this match were a prime example of that strategy not working out too well for us. Additionally, you may have noticed our disc was having issues getting up to speed, so we were trying to troubleshoot that while simultaneously avoiding their attack which led to us taking some nasty hits.

Luckily though we landed some hits of our own in the process. Although we weren’t connecting as well as Fusion was, one of our hits managed to bend their frame in just enough to crush one of the lipo batteries and thus causing the fire inside of their robot. So while Fusion did manage to end the match on fire once again in its career, this fire was different than its typical fires as noted by the fact that it took
10+ minutes for the crew to put it out immediately after the match had ended.

But backing up a bit, almost exactly at the halfway point in this fight is where things started to turn around for us. After recovering from a nasty blow that sent us half way across the arena and up onto the shelf (thanks partly to our own disc striking the floor), we were able to quickly drive off the shelf, self-right, and go on the offensive. After some glancing blows from our disc, it was apparent both of Fusions
weapons were down as smoke started billowing out from under its top panel. Another hit from our disk caught their top panel just enough to peel it back and reveal the flames that were slowly cooking him from the inside.

From where we stayed on the offensive doing everything possible to try to turn the tables on this fight. It was only because one of our treads delaminated that we lost mobility on the left side of the robot and could not continue chasing them down. At one point Fusion had driven across the arena and stopped moving entirely. We had thought his drive finally succumbed to the fire, however after asking the referee for the countdown we realized Fusion still had control of their drive and was waiting out
the last 20 seconds of the match to avoid taking on further damage.

After the match ended and the decision was announced, many people seemed surprised by the result. In the post-fight interview which wasn’t aired, the hosts had even asked if we wanted to use an appeal on the decision. However with this being our very first fight of the event (you only get a second appeal if your first appeal is successful) and the decision being unanimous we decided to not appeal the decision. While a case could be made for Emulsifier winning the fight, Fusion was dominant the first half of that fight and inflicted more visual damage on us so we respect the decision rightly so.

While we lost our first match, we felt we lost in the best way possible in an all-out war against a veteran robot & team. We learned Emulsifier’s design is durable, as it had taken many of Fusions best shots and kept going. To hear more about this fight be sure to watch our post-fight video. Also check out our pre-fight video for our upcoming match against Malice!

A huge thank you to all of our sponsors that helped to make Emulsifier possible:

Norwalk Havoc Robot League
FN Sheppard
TMS Titanium - 
MaxAmps
SendCutSend
Technical Equipment
Advance CNC Machining
Qooos Yachts