Crewbots

Crewbots
Seasons	Long Beach 1999 - Present

Crewbots, or CrewBots, are members of the BattleBots team responsible for cleaning up the arena between fights and handing out pogs to the winning teams.

Most of their on-screen appearances are cut from the TV airing and as such, information on individual Crewbots is scarce. However, they have often consisted of a mix of competitors and non-competitors.

1999 Events

During the 1999 Long Beach event, Crewbots were listed among the credits: Carlo Bertocchini, Matt Earnhardt, Rob Engle, Brain Foote [sic], Kenny Grote, Roy Hellen, Gary Lindberg, Kwandee Martinez, Jai Ojha, Ease Owyeung, Christopher Parton, Lonner Ralston, Dan Rupert, Mike Soultanian and Richie Wassam.

Comedy Central

As of Season 3.0, the exhaustive list of Crewbots were as follows: Pat Cabral, John Citi, Richard Dizmans, Larry Downey, Matt Earnhardt, Rob Engel, Dave Gladish, Kenny Grote, Roy Hellen, Geoffrey Huppert, Don Hurto, Jim Jaworowski, Rob Knight, Alan Lambertson, Gary Lindberg, Michael Meza, Don Nichols, Harut Pirinjian, Wayne Rayburn, Charlie Rhodes, Efren Sandoval, Ken Valdez, Richie Wassam, Betsy Wright.

Other Crewbots for the classic run of BattleBots included lead Matt Neubauer and former Robot Wars participant Andrew Norton.

2009 Championships

During the 2009 High School, Collegiate and Pro Championships, the following Crewbots were credited: Matt Neubauer, John Jean, Michael Garcia and Kwandi Martinez.

World Championship I - Present

The team of crewbots for the 2016 season

Crewbots returned for the reboot as an essential part of filming to ensure a smooth and safe turnover of fights during filming. Several from the Comedy Central era returned such as Matt Neubauer, who kept this role as lead Crewbot, as well as Pat Cabral and Ken Valdez. Veteran BattleBox operator Peter Lambertson also took up a Crewbot role for the reboot.

Crewbots for the 2019 season on Discovery.

Other Crewbots for World Championship I included Jeff Buttke, Michael Garcia and Nik Tizekker.

Though rarely referenced by name, they were often thanked on BattleBots social media following the hype leading up to a new season.

Not to be confused with the responsibilities of referees, the main purpose of a Crewbot is to direct teams and robots into place within the BattleBox prior to a fight. They then supervise as robots are turned on and teams exit the arena, which is securely closed and locked.

In the event of a timeout being called, Crewbots are allowed to join team members inside the arena to help unstick a robot or for other valid reasons. They orchestrate the pre and post-fight preparation, supervising in instances where damage has to be inspected in the event of a close judges' decision. Crewbots will sometimes be seen deactivating robots after the fight, though this is often performed by team members themselves, and will then arrange for teams and robots to exit the BattleBox in a quick and efficient fashion.

As written in the official BattleBots rules in modern seasons, Crewbots reserve the right to condemn "disruptive or other inappropriate behaviour" and even push for potential disqualification if warnings are ignored.

BattleBots Destruct-A-Thon

For the live show BattleBots: Destruct-A-Thon, a rotation of Crewbots cleaned up and prepared the BattleBox between fights during each and every live show. Crewbots consisted of on-site BattleBots competitors, including Team Overboard's Bradley Hanstad and Sam Gallagher, JackPot captain and Las Vegas resident Jeff Waters, and MadCatter's Ralph Hanson. At the end of shows, Crewbots were credited by name, and included Michael Garois de Quevede, Kyle Cheeks, Kaz Church and Arthur Wang.

Trivia

• Former Crewbot Roy Hellen joined Hardcore Robotics and Tombstone for World Championship V in 2020.