“Hopefully burst through or just cause a lot of damage overall, a lot of blunt force trauma,” Bengal Bots Combat Division Lead Marco Herbert said.

Have no fear. Herbert and the Bengal Bots have no intent to hurt humans, but the robots they are competing against might be in a little bit of danger.

“We are not wired to the robot at all physically, we have to communicate with it remotely,” Professional Development Chair Maureen Sanchez said.

The Bengal Bots work diligently to design and code a robot to compete in the Bengal Bot Brawl, LSU’s annual robotics competition.

“It’s really a competition of design, driving skill and some luck,” Herbert said.

For this year’s Bengal Bot Brawl also known as B^3, the team made Steve. Steve is a purple and gold robot, a nod to LSU’s school colors.

“You’re basically taking things that are over-engineered, over the top, and seeing who is going to have a malfunction first or who’s going to out-maneuver the opponent,” Herbert said.

“That’s really what happens whenever you take two metal hunks together, and smash them together and smash them together,” Herbert said.

On top of Steve the Robot is a pickaxe-shaped figure. Hence the reason why the name robot’s name is Steve. It is an ode to the Minecraft video game and its default character who often carries a pickaxe.

“We actually recycle a lot of our parts because we have a very tight budget,” Herbert said. “I want to say it was somewhere around 400 to 500 dollars that was spent this year, but it’s very easy to go over that.”

Although Steve lost to a senior engineering design team’s robot in the B^3 competition, the Bengal Bots are here to stay.

“Bengal Bots is a really good opportunity for students to kind of have an experience outside the classroom,” Herbert said.

“You can learn a lot in here no matter what your background is,” Sanchez said.

Together these students shape a world where robots fight to the death, or until one of them falls off the stage at Patrick F. Taylor Hall.