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There is something similar to that which is a frequent competitor in the Robot Wars series from the UK. The difference is that it's a tube with large wheels on either end, and the batteries and componentry is inside the wheels. It has a large "tail" extending from the middle, which it can flip back and forth to bash the opposition. It isn't terribly destructive, but its long-life means there is a cumulative effect from the constant battering, and it is both very fast and very manuverable. Unfortunately, it's been about six months since I watched the show, so the name of the bot escapes me -- but it's a highly effective design, and over the years it has won quite a few competitions.

A flamethrower and/or a chainsaw on Aibo, and he's all set for Robot Wars!

SCO sues IBM, Red Hat sues SCO, IBM sues SCO, et cetera, ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

I say forget the legal process. It's too slow. Let's get each company to build their own BattleBot and go on Robot Wars to settle this whole mess. Just imagine: "Big Blue", a huge flipper bot flinging "SCObot" through the air while a big red bowler hat smashes into SCO at every opportunity. Chunks of metal flying, flames licking up from dismembered metallic remains.

Ah I love the smell of burnt electric motors and battery acid in the morning!

develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world soccer champion team.

Sure they'll need some basic programming to be made autonomous but judging from a lot of what I've seen of professional soccer these robots should be able to give a human team a pretty good game!

We can only hope that ESPN picks this up.. then they'd have something to show on ESPN2 that's not jocks having a pissing contest.

Back in the day about 4-5 years ago, before Comedy Central picked up on it, they had the Robot Wars competition in one large 4 or 6-hour event on the Discovery Channel. No sportscasters, stupid interviews, etc. It was thouroghly better than what they do today...and I think a bit of the rules about weapons and such were more relaxed.

I think you'll find Robot Wars is still going, even after all the nonsense about who owned the name.

See also robotwars.com and SMIDSY

The first televised version of this was "Robot Wars" in the U.K. Their website mentions that "Robot Wars" is coming to the U.S. soon, but provides no further information. BTW, if you want to argue the merits of U.K. vs. U.S. robots, go to the message board at their site, the debate has been raging for months.
Battlebots is the first U.S. version, seen on Comedy Central in the U.S., The Comedy Channel in Canada, and BB2 in the U.K. Some of the robots from the British series appeared in Battlebots and did rather well. The rules and weight classes differ between the two shows. Battlebots info is here.
Finally, TLC, one of the Discovery channel networks has a series called "Robotica" which starts airing tonight at 9:00 PM E.S.T. It seems to be a hybrid of RobotWars and BattleBots, but there's not much information on the website.
Information about the robots can be found on the Robotwars and Battlebots websites, and many of the robots (or their builders) have their own sites, with more technical info than you can easy digest in one sitting. Take a look at the Suicidal Tendencies site and look at how they machined the individual tractor treads out of aluminium blocks. These people are fanatical!
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The first Robot Wars (that I know of anyway) was a live, ticketed event in 1994 at the Herbst Pavilion in San Francisco. It was fun and the t-shirt didn't suck. What I remember most was the intermission "entertainment" by Survival Research Laboratories which was this giant steel robot-thing. It spewed flame from a pulse jet (or so I was told, I don't know squat about pulse jets) and it was unbelievably loud. They did this indoors and I swear I felt my organs moving around. Really. I went to the other side of the pavilion some 200 feet away with my hands clamped over my ears and it was all I could do to remain conscious. Anyway, check out the history of Robot Wars.

When are they going to make an episode of Junk Yard Wars using this concept as a base? Ideally it would culminate in something like that other geek robot game show, but there are certainly other venues that could be followed, like autonomous retrieval of items. Perhaps a bit difficult without some sort of headstart though.

[ http://maur.litestep.com/ ][ maur@technologist.com ]

This would add a whole new dimension to Robot Wars, or Quake for that matter.

In the F-180 league, anyways, the AI is not done on the bot itself. Teams get a camera mounted above the playing surface which sends the image to the computer. The computer then makes the decisions and sends the info to the robots via RF. Color markings on top of Yale's bots help with identifying bot orientation as well as identification; after all, you need to know which bot you're looking at and which one you're going to move!

This year the rules changed to make the walls at a 45 degree angle to discourage bounce shots; I believe the intention is to do away with walls completely in future comptetitions. Next year the competition is in the US somewhere.

It's really cool to see these boxes on wheels driven by vcr motors chase after the golf balls. Maybe not as thrilling as Robot Wars, but thrilling nonetheless.

Watching robots that were designed specifically for moving a sphere around sounds less exiting to me.

Now, get those robots to kick the crap out of each other, and you've got something to watch.

Reminds me of Robot Wars (the 'arena sport') ...

...and Robot Wars (the cheesy yet amusing B-movie from 1993)

Don't forget Robot Wars which may be airing on your local PBS station.

Oooh, Robot Wars on the Moon, now that I gotta see! It can be no holds barred in weapon types too, as there wont be any spectators closer then a light second or so. I'm building mine with a MAD device too, so the best anyone could do against me is a draw!

Since the article did not contain links to the web sites that have some pictures and movies, here are some of the well-known sites:

• www.battlebots.com
• www.robotwars.com (look at the History section)
• www.botbash.com
• www.robotrumbles.com
• www.dangerousmachines.com
• www.sorc.org (Society of Robotic Combat)
• www.robohoo.com (a Yahoo-style index of all things robotic)