The NHRL Live Experience
On Saturday, 26 March, I attended the season opening event for the Norwalk Havok Robot League (NHRL) tournaments. The NHRL is a Connecticut-based series of robot combat tournaments for lighter weight classes. They run double elimination tournaments for beetleweight (3lb), 12lb combat, 12lb sportsman (less destructive weapons) and 30lb robots every other month or so. The top finishing robots in each tournament receive an invitation to the Championships in December. Each weight class has cash prizes for first and second place and charges a $25 registration fee per robot to compete.
I first became aware of the NHRL tournaments because of their YouTube livestream. They broadcast the entire event on YouTube with commentators, interviews, graphics, and a lot of polish. It’s a fun experience to be in the YouTube live chat and discuss the event with other fans and builders. They also edit together videos after the events with highlights or breakdowns of the final rounds of the tournaments. It’s a good experience.
I’m lucky enough to live within reasonable driving distance of their tournament location. So, last Saturday, I packed up a cooler and a little press go bag (chargers, notepad, pens, etc.) and headed up to the NHRL arena.
The building is massive. There is a small lobby where you check in right at the front. They confirm your ticket order ($10 for the full day, $8 after 2pm, $6 after 4pm) and ask you to sign two releases. One is to appear on camera in the livestream and future videos. The other is a hold harmless form in case of accident. The text on these agreements is pretty much boilerplate and the equivalent to what you would sign for any broadcast event. After that, you get your wristband and enter the facility.
The first space you’ll see is the brand new robot combat museum. I’ve mentioned a lot in my recaps that NHRL features quite a few Battlebots competitors. This becomes clear in the museum. NHRL is the home of actual combat-used robots from the reboot series. These include SMEEE, WAR? EZ!, Sharko, Ribbot, and both versions of Pain Train. Each bot is displayed on a covered table, with a little sign explaining when they competed and key facts about the robots.
This space also has the merchandise table, which is one of the cooler features for this tournament. Obviously you can pick up official NHRL merchandise. The tournament also hosts merchandise sales for competitors. If you fight in the tournaments, you can get some space on the shelves to sell your own t-shirts, stickers, magnets, poker chips, etc. at the tournaments. I picked up stickers for Milk Tank, Lynx, and Bobby on top of a mix of NHRL logos.
From there, you enter the actual fighting area. This is a full on production studio kept show ready during the entire event. The audience sits on metal bleachers under blue LED lights. This creates that really nice blurred out audience effect in the reflection of the actual boxes during the broadcast.
NHRL upgraded to four arenas for the 2022 season. Arena 1 and 4 are designed for 12lb and 30lb robots; Arena 2 and 3 are designed for 3lb robots. The four arenas are lined up in a row with space for competitors and camera crews to stand around each during the fights. They do stop competitors from standing on the audience side of the arenas now, so you’ll always have a clear view of the box in front of you.
There are also massive flat screen TVs hanging above the audience, showing you the live feed going out to the YouTube screen. Chances are, you’ll have a great view of one of the boxes depending on where you sit. If you sit in the last row, you can look into all the boxes a little bit. I moved up and down during my time there and found I actually preferred sitting in the front row at the corner of two boxes and watching the rest on screen. The boxes are basically at eye level if you’re sitting in the front, so you get a perfect view of the action.
One thing to be mindful of if you do come is the noise level. The 3lb robots don’t get too noisy unless there’s a massive impact in the box. The 12lb robots, even the sportsman class (no spinners allowed), are very loud. Bring ear protection if you have it. NHRL provides free ear protection to every attendee and I saw a big rush to grab it when the 12lb combat fights began. I was perfectly comfortable with foam earplugs from my local drug store that promised -30db of hearing protection.
It’s not just the bots. You hear the announcers the entire day. The sound design in the arena area is excellent. You easily hear the announcers, the interviews, and any other video feed they cut away to even over the noise of the robots. You might get a slight echo depending on where the interviews are happening (the boxes really bounce the noise around) but it’s nothing too distracting.
Seeing the fights live in person is an entirely different experience. The robots are bigger and smaller than you think they are. The beetleweights fight in an 8’ by 8’ arena, which is the size of two sheets of full size plywood. They look so big on the screen because the cameras are in the box and set at just the right angle to fill the screen. If they tilted a 1/4” either way, you’d see the audience clapping and cheering along with the fights.
The 12lb and 30lb robots are huge by comparison. They fight in a 16’ by 16’ arena, which makes them look smaller during the livestream. Those robots seem so much bigger in person. They’re louder, they move faster, and they hit harder. I was really looking forward to seeing the 12lb division, in particular, and was not disappointed with the matches I stayed for.
One of the greatest parts of the day was seeing the efficiency of the operations. I’m a theatre person to the bones. I know how chaotic any live production can be. There was none of that at NHRL.
When one fight started, the next fight was already being loaded into the box. Those second set of robots were ready to fight as soon as the previous fight ended. The new fight would start and the previous fight would drive their bots to the door, disable them, and remove them. The NHRL crew would come in and sweep the box floor, using a vacuum as necessary. Any repairs to cameras or the house bots also happened. The next set of robots would set up and be ready to fight by the time the second fight was finished. This continued for about four hours straight at the top of the tournament. There are so many beetleweights competing that operations like this are essential.
It takes a little more time to handle the 12lb and 30lb robots, so those fights were usually broken up with the later rounds of the beetleweight division. As they day goes on, there will inevitably be more time between matches. Competitors are guaranteed a 20 minute break between fights for repairs. Eventually, the competition is down to a handful of robots in each division that need that time for repairs. This past tournament started around 10AM on Saturday and finished around 1:40AM on Sunday. It’s a long day.
I didn’t stay for the whole thing. That’s the benefit of living as close as I do. I left in the middle of the afternoon, came home, and turned on the livestream. I went to bed when I was tired, woke up the next day, and finished out with the saved finals on YouTube.
Naturally, I was excited to see the robots I had watched on the livestream before. Seeing Jameson Go’s award-winning Silent Spring, a shuffler with a custom design that can move as fast as wheeled robots, actually move in person was astonishing. So was watching Evan Arias, captain of Pain Train, absolute demolish one of his teammate’s robots with Shreddit Bro, the most winning robot in the history of NHRL. Seth Schaffer from the Bloodsport and Retrograde team debuted the newest iteration of his glass cannon bot Division, essentially a giant asymmetrical spinner on two tiny wheels designed purely for knockouts. I got to see his spectacular KO in his first fight from the front row and was equally terrified and excited by the experience. Elizabeth Cao from the Overhaul team also brought back her beetleweights Electric Sheep and Drum Go Dum this tournament. She’s a fantastic driver and I’m a big fan of competitors who know how to run the Arena.
Then I got to see Andrew Davis, the creator of Jack Rabbit and Jack Move, show off his incredible driving skills with his children controlling a minibot, a brightly colored wedge, for all of his fights. I didn’t get to see Milk Tank, the scrappy 12lb bot with glitter-filled balloons and a dream, fight live, but I did get to see the team getting ready for their first fight. I saw a whole lot of my favorite beetleweights, including Eruption, sepio1, and Black Bird fight right in front of me.
There were a few new to me robots that grabbed my attention. Waddles! is a new 30lb robot from members of Team Ribbot. It’s has a penguin theme and the audience instantly fell for them. Clyde is a particularly deadly flamethrower in the beetleweight division. It’s a wedge that was pinning opponents against the wall (pins are allowed for 10 seconds at a time at NHRL) and running the flamethrower in bursts so their opponents couldn’t escape. Though it didn’t fare the best in its debut fight, Front Towards Enemy from Daniel Gonzalez, a member of Team Valkyrie, was exciting to watch navigate the arena. It’s a custom three wheel drive, something akin to the swerve drive that Triple Crown used in Battlebots. I love unconventional drive robots. That includes Pensive Prosciutto, a beetleweight full body spinner using a similar shuffling mechanism to Silent Spring. The attention grabbing robots aren’t necessarily the most winning or successful in the Arena. Some of them just have a great design, a great strategy, or a great bit of innovation that brings something new and eye catching to the sport.
What I found the most incredible was how supportive the entire production was of the various student builders at the competition. I sat right by a group of high school students from Brooklyn who were fighting for the first time in the beetleweight division. They were so excited to be there and get their first matches underway. It didn’t matter if they won or lost; they were proud of what they did. The NHRL celebrated all of the young student builders, ranging anywhere from middle school students with their parents to graduate students at top engineering schools. This is a tournament for everyone with an interest in combat robotics and the NHRL makes great efforts to include and celebrate everyone.
My own goal this year is to enter the beetleweight division with my own robot. I was scheduled to compete back in September, but life got in the way as long time readers know. I’m hoping to have a simple lifter ready to compete in May. I don’t quite feel ready to build a more destructive weapon, but NHRL has an active weapon rule. I know how to build a simple lifter mechanism from haunting and prop work in theatre and I’d like to think I’ll be good at controlling my robot.
Why so soon? May is a tournament they’re dedicating to new competitors this year. All of the robots have to be new to NHRL. If you competed with it at one of the NHRL tournaments in the past, you can’t bring it in May. That doesn’t mean the fights will be easier, but it does put builders of all backgrounds at a more level playing field. The most experienced builder in the world still has to work out the gremlins on a brand new bot. Even if I don’t make it in May, I’ll surely be ready for one of the qualifying tournaments that run through November.
I’m excited to return to the NHRL as a spectator and a competitor. It was incredible to witness the event go off in person. The operations are so smooth, the audience so welcoming, and the action so electrifying that you can’t help but get into the fighting spirit. Anyone near the Norwalk, Connecticut area with an interest in robot combat should try to make it to one of the tournaments. The full schedule is already up for the 2022 season. The next tournament happens 23 April.
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