Local BattleBot Phenom
Stout engineering student rocks them, socks them
Like most of us with a Y chromosome, I possess an inherent fondness for robots. I love robots of all shapes, sizes, makes, and models, ranging from the monstrous MechaGodzilla right down to the nebulous nanite. The only thing better than robots? Fighting robots.
So you can imagine my glee when I heard about Clint Ewert, a Stout engineering, technology, and mechanical design major who has more BattleBots titles and trophies than I have fingers. For the uninitiated, BattleBots is a competition in which two teams build a robot, equip it with some form of lethal weapon, and then let those robots loose in the “battle box,” which is essentially a 30-foot-by-30-foot arena – sometimes full of rotating saws and pneumatic hammers – to beat the mechanical snot out of one another. The rules are fairly simple: the last bot moving wins.
Clint’s family got started “in 2001 when we were watching it on TV, and my dad, being the competitive mechanical genius that he is, decided that he could build something that would revolutionize the BattleBots world,” according to Clint.
What Clint and his dad built was the “Son of Whyachi,” a machine with a fairly simple but brutally efficient design. This efficiency stemmed from the make-up of SoW’s weapon, a spinning apparatus with three arms that extend from the top of the bot down towards the ground. Add a blade to each arm and you’ve got not only an offensive weapon, but an effective rotating shield against most other robot attacks. You might hit SoW, sure, but you’re getting hurt in the process. With this bot (which you can see on YouTube in all its whirling glory) the Ewert family brought home the Spring 2001 BattleBots Heavyweight World Championship, and proceeded to become, according to Clint, “the most feared and well respected robot team in the world.”
From there, Clint hasn’t let up, winning an impressive list of titles with the most recent addition being his conquest of the BattleBots Collegiate Championship middleweight division just last year. Clint has built or helped build somewhere between 30 and 40 robots of varying designs, a process which can take one to 500 hours. In Clint’s words, that translates to “basically every weekend for a couple months with several people helping.”
Materials are easy to come by as Clint’s dad owns a machine shop, but bots can still cost anywhere from $500 to $40,000 to construct. However, even though prize payouts are “lucky to be in the thousand dollar range,” Clint still feels that battling bots is worth it – not only for the adrenaline rush it provides, but because it allows him the opportunity to hang out and create with his best friends. “Also,” he says, “the hotel shenanigans get pretty interesting when my buddies come along to the competition.”
Sadly, BattleBots is not what it once was. Somehow the interest in robotic death-dealing fighting machines (which used to be quite high; I have the toys to prove it) has died out. “We’re still continuing to fight robots,” Clint says, “just not as often because we need more fan support to hopefully get it back on TV and make the prize money worth the expense.”
In a sport where robots are frequently mangled, mashed, and blown apart, it’s beyond me how interest has dropped. In the end, though, whether or not BattleBots comes back won’t really affect Clint’s true goal, which is to someday “take over the family business … and give my dad a break from work.” An aim that may not be as exciting as winning a robot fighting championship, but is certainly just as worthy.
Clint’s Biggest BattleBots Titles
Clint has won, according to him, “a couple dozen trophies and plaques.” These are some of his more notable accomplishments.
- • Battlebot Heavyweight Champion of the World 2001
• Battlebot Middleweight Champion 2006
• Battlebot Middleweight Champion 2007
• 15-pound Division National Champion 2007
• 15-pound Division National Champion 2008
• Battlebots Middleweight National Collegiate Champion 2009
