Equals Zero Robotics, formerly known as Team JACD, are an active team who have competed in multiple BattleBots World Championships with their flagship heavyweight entry Overhaul.
The four main team members, Jamison Go, Adam Bercu, Charles Guan and Dane Kouttron, originally named the team JACD after the first letter of their respective forenames. However, this changed after three of these departed for other teams.
The team are credited for giving starts to a number of future team captains, including Jamison Go, Adam Bercu and Lucy Du, who have since captained SawBlaze, Brutus and Valkyrie respectively. While team captain Charles Guan has remained with Overhaul since its debut, the team have rarely found success in BattleBots, with a career-best quarter-final finish in World Championship I.
Outside BattleBots[]
The team have since competed in the July 2022 Robotica event in Houston, Texas, where they placed first in the heavyweight competition with Deferred Maintenance.
Overhaul was also present as a display.
Team Members[]
Charles Guan[]
Captain of Equals Zero Robotics, he is the only team member who has been present for every one of Overhaul's seasons to date. He has also built a 250lb sportsman-legal robot called Sadbot, which was renamed Deferred Maintenance for the 2022 Robotica event. Outside of heavyweight robots, Charles Guan has built robots using clamp and lift weaponry which predate Overhaul, but has also designed and built to-scale replicas of different iterations of his BattleBots entry under various names. He has also built various off-road vehicles, such as a motorized off-road skateboard built in 2011 for Maker Faire in Orlando, prior to the event hosting robot combat competitions. Other robots of his include Stance Stance Revolution and a 30lb Overhaul replica ironically named I Can't Believe It's Not Overhaul.
Lucy Du, Hanna Lin & Cynthia Lu[]
Lucy Du was invited to Team JACD by Charles Guan and Jamison Go ahead of the 2015 season, having befriended both when getting into combat robotics. Later joining Team SawBlaze, she has been part of Jamison Go's team in every season since. She currently competes with her own 12lb robot HotLeafJuice, which is driven by David Jin of Ribbot.
She also fights in National Havoc Robot League events in the 3lb class with undercutter Boomerang and has fought as part of Team HaLuCyNation. with robots such as Destroying Angel (30lb) and a revamped version of Jamison Go's Dominant Mode (3lb) called Deathcap. Like Jamison, she joined Team JACD ahead of Overhaul's debut BattleBots season. Ahead of filming for World Championship VII, it was announced that Lucy Du would be captaining Valkyrie.
Hanna Lin and Cynthia Lu also made up part of Team HaLuCyNation, with Lin moving on after Overhaul's debut season, and Cynthia Lu staying on until the team's 2018 campaign. Neither have split off to compete outside of the Equals Zero Robotics team, however.
Adam Bercu[]
An experienced competitor in his own right, Adam Bercu was only part of the team for World Championship I before designing, applying and competing with Brutus. During BattleBots IQ, he fought with middleweight Coincidence before making up part of Busted Nuts Robotics, who later went on to build Witch Doctor.
Dane Kouttron[]
Also exclusively part of Team JACD during World Championship I, Dane Kouttron later spearheaded Team Danger 4 and Road Rash. However, it was reduced to a single rumble against Overhaul and SawBlaze. An MIT engineer by day, he built a semi-autonomous snowblower called Chopper in 2019.[1]
Jamison Go & Elizabeth Cao[]
Part of Team JACD exclusively during the 2015 season, Jamison Go joined having been friends with captain Charles Guan since childhood.[2] He later split off to enter SawBlaze into future seasons of BattleBots. He is an established roboteer in lower weight classes too, regularly competing in US events such as the National Havoc Robot League with 3lb robots Silent Spring and Silent X, both of which are armed with devastating horizontal spinners. Silent Spring did not lose any of its seventeen fights throughout 2019, marking the longest winning streak in the event's history. He previously built a 3lb drum spinner called Dominant Mode, and later donated parts to teammate Lucy Du while both part of Team JACD. Having found success with RON, Jamison Go also designed and built the 30lb hammer saw MegatRON, which bears a strong resemblance to SawBlaze.
Alongside BattleBots competitor Elizabeth Cao, he has competed with 12lb multibot Same Same But Different, comprised of 6lb replicas of End Game and Bite Force, called End Same and Same Force. Cao herself was previously part of Team Food Fight and Big Dill during the 2020 season, before joining Overhaul in 2021. She has competed in VEX Robotics events since 2013, mentoring in the years leading up to her first BattleBots appearance, where she specializes in CAD and machining work. In April 2020, Cao founded RobotMatter, a business which distributes robot parts across the US. She did not remain with the team for future seasons.
Scott Scherega[]
Scott Scherega joined the team in 2021 having been unsuccessful in applying with his own creation, Stampede.
Robots[]
| Name | Weight Class | Season |
|---|---|---|
| Overhaul | Heavyweight | World Championship I World Championship II World Championship III World Championship V (Withdrew) World Championship VI BattleBots: Champions I World Championship VII BattleBots: Champions II |
Win/Loss Record[]
- Wins: 4
- Losses: 18