CoreWeave Fully Connected 2026 | Rob Bahr, BattleBots

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Sr. Engineer

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Rob Bahr, BattleBots

Rob Bahr

Sr. Engineer BattleBots

In this interview from Fully Connected 2026, Rob Bahr, senior engineer at BattleBots Inc., joins theCUBE's John Furrier and Dave Vellante to discuss how CoreWeave's sponsorship is accelerating the use of AI-driven simulation in competitive robot combat. Bahr explains how teams now run simulations to test weapon configurations, from bar spinners to single-tooth designs, before committing to a build. He details how material science has evolved beyond stainless steel sheet metal toward 3D-printed plastics and rubbers, each requiring its own simulation testing. B... Read more

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How is AI being used in BattleBots—how does it intersect with robot design, autonomy, and team workflows? add

How is the advent of fast AI-driven simulation changing the way combat robots are designed, including weapon choices and materials? add

1) How do hardware and software engineering combine to produce top-tier fighting robots, and what is the key factor that separates upper-echelon builders? 2) Given the history of BattleBots, where is the next major innovation in the sport likely to come from? add

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Rob Bahr, BattleBots

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(INTRO)

John Furrier

>> Welcome back, everyone, to theCUBE's live coverage here in San Francisco for the BattleBots at Connected Conference. Connected, fully

Dave Vellante

>> connected.Fully connected

John Furrier

>> intelligence.I'm so excited for this segment, I already kind of blew it. We need B-roll. Rob Bahr, senior engineer at BattleBots, famous, very entertaining tech-oriented events in Vegas where I've seen them. Rob, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Thanks for joining the show. You guys have a deal with CoreWeave. They're the official AI cloud partner of BattleBots and the Pro League. So shout out to CoreWeave. They sponsor the F1, but that's really nice acknowledgement. BattleBots is fun. It's nerdy. It's hardware involved. we're in a hardware world with these AI factories. So Dave, will we see a battle of the AI factories? Going on?

Dave Vellante

>> I think there is. There already is one.

>> All right, soon, soon, maybe.

John Furrier

>> take us through what you do at BattleBots, because you're a key role there. You're behind the scenes but very famous.

>> I'm famous amongst the builders, I would say that. I don't get a lot of TV time or airtime, but I work over at BattleBots Destruct-A-Thon, which is the live show in Vegas. We have had a couple of, uh, you know, with the change of television changing, we had a few sponsors like CoreWeave who sponsored a YouTube series for us. And we had many teams come out and compete against each other and it was great. There are a couple new robots that are trying to dabble in the AI world, which is great.

John Furrier

>> So one of the things in their relationship besides the branding and kind of the halo effect that they get in their tribe, which is hardware, kind of an alignment there. Totally cool. I see that. Shout out to Jean English. But the teams get access to the platform. How is AI being used? Because these are autonomous bots now. Like, take us through where the tech intersects.

>> So some of the robots are autonomous and they're getting there. And there's a few other college teams that really want to push that. But what a lot of guys have started to do is run simulations on their computers of what type of weapon do they want to use? Do they want to use a bar? Do they want to use a circle? Do they want a single tooth? and they start using and running those simulations in each one of these scenarios to figure out what's their best defense, what's their best offense, and things like that. Damage-wise, they can take a look and try to see what is the most common thing to break.

John Furrier

>> when we covered AI, it was first called high-performance computing. and that was like the big workstations, the big compute, and companies like Boeing would design their wing It would take like weeks to figure out the aerodynamics. tons of simulation. Now with AI, it's so fast. How is design changing? Or how would you think it's going to change? Because I'd imagine not only is the simulation going to give them great data, but I might want to come up with a novel design.

>> There's actually been a couple teams that have started to try to do new designs, and especially with 3D printing and material changing so fast. People are starting to run simulations on different types of plastics, different types of rubbers, different types other than just the stainless steel sheet metal that they used to do back in the day

John Furrier

>> with—Brute force.

>> I lasted longer than you. And where it was rivets and wood and things like that. But the technology for materials has changed. And so we need to run the simulations on those types of materials.

Dave Vellante

>> So you got hardware engineering, you got software engineering, Those two things coming together, what is the salient aspect of building bots that are fighter bots? What's the key? What's the secret to being top upper echelon?

>> Upper echelon of robot builders. Well, I will say that in my experience with engineers in general, BattleBots engineers are like crème de la crème. And I think it's the fail fast environment, the fail fast of, you know what's broken, you know what's been destroyed. So you can see that if something kind of works, you're kind of at a 50-50. But if you know something fails in BattleBots, you know that it failed. It's broken. It's in pieces or it's on fire or something like that. And so moving quickly ahead through technology, I think is one of the big benefits of that.

John Furrier

>> Where's the big innovation going to come from in your view, if you had to predict? Given the history you've seen, where's innovation going to be on the BattleBots?

>> I really think AI is going to play a key role in computing and simulation and possibly in the autonomy, which is going to push the hardware further than it's already been. Because it's kind of like this leapfrog effect. You have good hardware, then you have good software. You have good hardware and you have good software. So it's going to definitely push the sport forward.

John Furrier

>> I want you to explain the culture and the community. They're builders, they're nerds. They love to geek out. They're mechanical. I think with AI, I'd imagine that it's going to democratize access to getting more builders in.

>> I really hope so.

John Furrier

>> Give us your thoughts on that, because I think this is going to be one of those things where robotics clubs are hot in California here. Every high school has like 3 varsity teams of robotics. So you got a trend, right. Cradle to grave. They're growing up thinking like this. They're making their own skateboards, electrical things here. So it's a cultural opportunity.

>> I would say absolutely. a lot of them go to school together. They become friends together. They go out in these industries, like we are here. And there's a handful of people that I didn't know that would be here that are already builders and people that I know. And so the cross communication with all of them and everything else is great.

John Furrier

>> Yeah, I notice you're wearing your Safety Rob shirt. You're known for that. It's one of your jobs. Can you explain the safety aspect? Because most people think it's a cage match. What safety do you have to pay attention to? Explain the depths and the nuances.

>> One of the biggest things I will say is, a lot of technology these days use lithium batteries. And lithium, when it catches on fire, that gas is actually pretty toxic for people. So we did something with PBS just recently and one of the guys from NFPA reached out to us. So we helped them develop key points for NFPA 800, which for me, most people might not understand, but for me, I'm geeking out, I'm nerding out because NFPA is the standard for every fire safety thing across the country.

Dave Vellante

>> But, you know, I would ask, so wait, so you sort of implement that as the standard or?

>> We gave them some pointers on implementing what is the standard because BattleBots has gone through so many lithium battery fires and we know what to do, how to handle it, and what works and what doesn't. And so we've helped give a few pointers for that.

John Furrier

>> What works?

>> Put a mask on. Don't breathe the fumes and contain it. Cool it down.

Dave Vellante

>> Hold your breath. And there's a lot of strategy involved too, right? it's like halftime. Adjustments,

>> right?depending on what your opponent is, you can, there's small adjustments that you can make if you want to go for a wedge or the type of bar spinner, like I was saying earlier, the simulations, how tall the other robot is. There's all these little tiny tweaks that you can do just to try to outthink your opponent. And we actually have rules in place in the rule book, because this kind of got out of hand a couple years ago where they would try to make their last minute adjustments literally at the last minute before they were supposed to go into the arena.

Dave Vellante

>> Kind of go to school on what they see.

>> Okay. So MMA, it's like you don't want—

John Furrier

>> they have two things going on here, technical and then strategy in the cage, right?

>> So we made sure that the last minute changes had to come an hour before the—

Dave Vellante

>> you don't see your opponent until the moment, is that correct?

>> Or no? And so in BattleBots, especially in the new fight format that we have, you'll know who your opponents are coming up. So you know what they have, they know what you have, what they're dealing with. And so sometimes they come with something completely different. HyperShock this year came with a completely different setup for each one of his opponents.

Dave Vellante

>> Oh, sorry. So I misspoke. You know the teams against whom you're competing, but you don't know what bot you're competing with, right? They could come with anything. Oh, no, no, no.

>> Most teams know exactly who their opponents are going to be. And some of them are very, very different from each other. HUGE is a very huge robot that is about 3 feet tall. And then there's other people like Witch Doctor that are very placed.

Dave Vellante

>> But do you have to bring— if I'm, say, Witch Doctor's owners, do I have to bring Witch Doctor to the battle or can I change it up? What are the rules there?

>> You've got to bring a version of your robot where the chassis is the same to compete against the other person. Does that make sense?

John Furrier

>> Yeah, yeah.

Dave Vellante

>> There's a set of standards you have to comply to.

>> Right.

Dave Vellante

>> And then within that framework, you can— you have some latitude. Yeah.

John Furrier

>> So BattleBots, for people who don't know, they're robots smashing against each other. Tell us stories, some of the cool episodes you've seen, fights you've seen, memorable moments, good, bad, and the ugly.

>> I've seen some amazing things happen in that box. And every year we try to make the box a little stronger, a little better. This year during Pro League, we have these cattle gates. And for the first time, I saw a robot—

John Furrier

>> I like that—

>> crash literally through those cattle gates. Those cattle gates are supposed to give us some space so we can actually open the doors to get inside. It went straight through. And I'm thinking the amount of energy that these robots are now outputting while keeping within the standards of their weight class and their battery voltage and everything else is becoming very, very impressive.

John Furrier

>> And what's it take to be a pro leaguer?

>> Oh, there's some steps where, you know, people think they can do it and we have a couple Proving Grounds. You can come and try to prove yourself. And they learn pretty quickly that there's a few things that you can't do. Like one of the teams, very famous, they had 80 screws holding in their robot or 80 screws holding in their batteries in the robot. I said, if your robot catches on fire, I'm sorry, I'm just going to let it burn. I can't risk someone taking out 80 screws to get those batteries out.

Dave Vellante

>> Yeah.And the prize money is what, tens of

John Furrier

>> thousands?

Dave Vellante

>> Yeah.Or is it?

>> Is it?You know, I actually don't

Dave Vellante

>> know.

>> Okay.But I never get to see that

Dave Vellante

>> money.But yeah, but I would think I mean, the effort that goes into building these things is remarkable.

>> It is. And it is great bragging rights amongst the builders themselves.

John Furrier

>> There's a lot of bragging rights involved. For the folks that don't know how it works, let's just say I might be interested in competing. What's the steps? Do I ladder in? Do I got to do a demo? Do I come in and meet people? How do I show up with a bot?

>> You go and you write an email to hello@battlebots.com or you go to the website and you say you want to compete and then you usually have to submit a drawing, and that drawing comes to me and I review it and I say yes or no. And got to make sure you don't have things like— there's no dynamite, no EMPs. Sorry, there's a few rules that you have to abide by, but otherwise, you know.

John Furrier

>> But you're pretty okay with bringing people in?

>> Absolutely. We don't want to raise too high a bar.

John Furrier

>> It's more technical safety, right?

>> Mechanics, make sure your on-off switch isn't in the wrong place.

John Furrier

>> And then think, okay, will this work? Yeah. Sometimes you got to get new people in there. You need new blood.

>> There are times where a builder will come in and I know and other people know it's not going to work.

Dave Vellante

>> All right.

John Furrier

>> So give us the age group of the youngest and oldest competitor that wins.

>> This Pro League, we had a couple of episodes come out where we had a— I think he must have— he's young. He's really young, but he's a very good driver. And so he competed with his dad and their robot Copperhead. I— he's gotta be like 10.

John Furrier

>> Really? Yeah.

>> And then you've got Ray Billings, who's the godfather of kinetic energy that everybody calls him. And he— I don't know how old Ray is, but

John Furrier

>> he's—hey, don't even wanna guess.

Dave Vellante

>> I don't know.

>> I don't wanna hurt his ego.

John Furrier

>> He's 25.

>> So plus, yeah.

Dave Vellante

>> So Dean Kamen had his first robot competition up in Manchester, New Hampshire, in the early '90s, I wanna say. You guys started not too long after that, I think. Probably before theCUBE. I'm sure before theCUBE.

John Furrier

>> Yeah, way before.

>> 1995, I believe, was the first.

John Furrier

>> Yeah.

>> Our Trey competed in Robot Wars in 1995, and then 1999, I think, was the first BattleBots at Long Beach, at the Great Pyramid, at the Blue Pyramid in Long

John Furrier

>> Beach.I like how it's got an X Games vibe to it.

Dave Vellante

>> Yes.

John Furrier

>> It's a cultural thing, very cross-generational.

>> Yeah, I was going to say we might be nerds, but we do have a big adrenaline rush when those bots go in the box.

John Furrier

>> Hey Rob, you want to say a few words to CoreWeave, to the people watching about BattleBots? Put a plug in for the organization, your work.

>> I'm grateful for CoreWeave for sponsoring us. I hope they do it again. BattleBots is all about inspiration for young guys. It's why I do it. I want more engineers in this world. Our owner, Trey Roski, wants more engineers in this world. And that's what I feel we need. We need more smart

John Furrier

>> people.We appreciate what you do.

>> It's great entertainment.

John Furrier

>> It is nerdy. It's

>> fun.It's

John Furrier

>> fun.If you haven't seen it, check it out. It is really worth it. Awesome. You're in Vegas. Definitely go. Thanks for coming on. I appreciate what you

>> do.Absolutely. Thank you for having me on,

John Furrier

>> guys.Safety, a big theme of AI, by the way, too. So nice crossover there. And CoreWeave offering its platform for simulations. digital twins are a hot topic and you're seeing it everywhere. This is theCUBE. We're doing our part. Of course, go to theCUBE.net. That's our digital twin. Thanks for watching.