Enjoy this rewind from July 2020!
This week on the podcast, we catch up two incredible engineers—Chomp captain Zoe Stephenson and teammate Jascha Little!
Zoe and Jascha are a wife-and-husband team who work together as engineers on experimental projects at Applied Invention. Their most visible project, perhaps, is The Long Now Foundation's 10,000 Year Clock, a massive mechanical timekeeper that is designed to survive and tell time until the year 12,000. (Some fans may know that Bronco team captain Zander Rose is the director of The Long Now Foundation).
It’s unbelievably difficult to design an object to survive for 10,000 years—metals corrode, moving parts seize up, materials that touch one another run the risk of chemically reacting to one another in strange ways. For inspiration, the team looked to the past and the designs of other mechanical objects, early timepieces and mechanical computers. It’s a fascinating project, and one that we will most certainly continue to talk about on the show.
BattleBots fans know Zoe and Jascha for Chomp, the AI-infused hammerbot that ended Paul Ventimiglia’s championship run in 2016. This year, Chomp is back—as a superheavyweight walker bot with a turret-mounted hammer. Zoe and Jascha talk at length about the design, and the technical challenges they face as they try to cut weight from the bot.
We really enjoyed this interview, and we hope you do, too.
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BattleBots S5E6 Recap (Plus, Old Habits & New Beginnings with Sharko Captain Ed Robinson)
BattleBots S5E5 Recap (Plus Our Interview with Hydra Captain Jake Ewert!)
BattleBots S5E4 Recap (Plus, Happy 2021!)
BattleBots S5E3 Recap (Plus, Coming Full Circle with RotatoЯ Captain Victor Soto)
BattleBots S5E2 Recap (Plus, Rising from the Ashes with Perfect Phoenix’s Tyler Nguyen and Juli Johnson)
BattleBots S5E1 Recap (Plus, our “Swift” Interview with End Game’s Nick Mabey and Jack Barker)
Like the Best Summer Camp Ever: Our Interview with BattleBots Showrunner Aaron Catling
Part 2: I Like Big Fans and I Cannot Lie, with “The Bot Whisperer” Pete Abrahamson
Part 1: From The Blob to BattleBots, with “The Bot Whisperer” Pete Abrahamson
Hittin' it Big with JackPot Captain Jeff Waters
Shredding it with Pain Train Captain Evan Arias and Teammate Anthony D’Ambrosio
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Season 5 is going to be BONKers: Our Interview with Nelly the Ellybot Captain Sarah Malyan
The Everlasting Botstomper: Our Interview with Cobalt Captain Dave Moulds
Take It Up With the Billings Department! Our Interview with Tombstone Captain Ray Billings
Out-Standing in His Field: Our Interview with Bale Spear Captain Earl Pancoast III
The Balance Between Fun and Function: Our Interview with Lock-Jaw Captain Donald Hutson
“Objection!” Our Entirely Legal Interview with Double Jeopardy’s Evan Wooley, Bryce Wooley and Bill Wooley
Our Live Panel with BattleBots Designers Orion Beach, Leanne Cushing, Emmanuel Carrillo , Isaak Malers and Ellis Ware
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