Hey Jason!
This looks like a lot of fun and right up our ally with the Weaponized Plastic Robots we are building in a couple weeks!
In short, We are hosting a series of workshops and SIGs to build small, affordable and fun fighting robots to be part of the Weaponized Plastic Fighting League. The robot base we will be building is called Rotato, (Name subject to change in case anyone comes up with a better idea) and it uses an ESP32 as the main controller, as opposed to typical Battlebots that are really expensive and dangerous RC cars. The design is inspired by my usual fighter called Democratic Robot… instead of someone driving it a crowd can vote to decide how the robot moves 
(It’s not a great fighter, but it definitely has the right spirit)
Would something like that fit what you are looking for? If so, I’d love to get in touch and see how we can participate 