Vanilla Scented
A battlebot built in a garage for no particular reason, which ended up in an arena in Las Vegas — and had to be rebuilt between fights.
TODO(liam): this is the skeleton, written from the one paragraph in your PDF. The headings are the shape of a good build story; the words under them need to be yours. Where I have guessed, I have said so.
It was not supposed to be a competition robot
It started as something to build. Off the wall, vanilla scented, deliberately not serious — the kind of project you start because the idea is funny and you want to see if it can be done.
Somewhere between “let’s build a robot” and “we are loading a van for Nevada,” it stopped being a joke.
What it is
| Weight class | TODO |
| Drive | TODO |
| Weapon | TODO |
| Built by | TODO — team size and who did what |
Las Vegas, January 2025
We took it to BattleBots: Training Grounds.
We won our first fight.
Then the motor and motor controller went. That is the part of the story worth telling — not the win, the ninety minutes afterwards. A dead motor controller between matches is a problem with a deadline attached, and you cannot order a part. You fix what you have with what is in the pit.
The part I am actually proud of
The team was flat after it broke. Morale is a real failure mode and nobody puts it in the build log.
I kept everyone in it. We fixed the robot and we had a good time doing it — and both of those were choices, not accidents.
What I would do differently
- TODO
- TODO
- TODO