It’s (Almost) Robot Fighting Time Again: BattleBots Season 12

I was thrilled to be a small part of last season’s BattleBots World Championships – visiting the pits, watching a taping of the show, and getting to know the people behind Team Ghost Raptor.

This year we are collaborating with a new robot and a new team – Switchback - returning this year with a very large team and a great-looking robot.

And due to my BattleBots expertise (or is it because I live in Las Vegas where the show takes place?), I have once again been honored with the position of “local Onshape rep.” 

Onshape Reppin’ at BattleBots in Vegas

I recently visited the team and got to spend some time in the pits. After a quick negative COVID test (I’m 3-for-3 now), I was ushered into the pit area by a member of the outstanding BattleBots staff and we set off looking for Team Switchback.

This is how I found the team in the pits.

The Switchback team is big – 14 members in total – and is led by Greg Needel of Rev Robotics, a North Texas firm that provides high-quality robotics products to over 190 countries globally in the educational and competitive robotics community. 

Other team members are Christina Needel, David Yanoshak, Amanda Morrison, Trevor Van Doren, James Nguyen, Orion DeYoe, Gabby DeYoe, Frank Lima, Scotty Allen, Phil Luetchford, Parker Holloway, Wolf Thomas, and Noah Santoni.

Some of the members of Team Switchback.

I didn’t get a chance to meet everyone, but I did get to spend some time with Greg talking about how Onshape helped them get ready for this season’s competition. 

A lot of BattleBots teams consist of members in different parts of the country (and world), and Team Switchback is no exception. 

By utilizing Onshape’s built-in collaboration and data management tools, the team was able to work with one source of truth and eliminate errors related to out-of-date files, overwritten work, and lost data due to crashes and/or file corruption. The team is quite happy with the decision to go with Onshape to design this year’s robot.

Where to Watch BattleBots Season 12

The new season is set to start broadcasting in early January, but you can learn more about Team Switchback by following their social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram). 

We’ll also be interviewing members of the team for an upcoming Innovator’s Insider podcast and look for a special announcement around Onshape Live ’23 coming up in March. You won’t want to miss out on something really cool the team has in store for Onshape users.

Poker chip swag. How appropriate for Las Vegas.

Thanks again to Greg and the whole team for hosting me in the pits and sharing some of their thoughts on the new season. And thanks for the nice gift. I can’t wait to start watching and I look forward to hearing Faruq Tauheed announce…

”IT’S ROBOT FIGHTING TIME!”