Robot Wars Coming Stateside

aaronhaley writes "Reuters is reporting that Vicom will be bringing Robot wars stateside to air on several of their networks. Let's hope it's closer to the real thing that BattleBots is." And lets hope they keep the sportscaster crap to a minimum, and give us more mechanical bits.

Comments

Is robotics the new slavery?

[alewando]

The 20th century was a century of many things, not least of which was the advancement of robotics. Once battery power became truly feasible on a portable basis, and once machining was perfected on a small enough scale, robots emerged as a dominant mechanism of accomplishing what people either didn't want to do or were not well suited to doing.

There is lots of criticism based on how robotics is demeaning to working class humans, pushing them out of dull but well-paying factory jobs. But far too long overlooked is the plight of the robots themselves.

Most robots don't live the cushy lifestyles their celebrity brethren in Hollywood live. (Bender's cocaine and lubejob habits are well documented, for example.) Most are consigned to living in substandard conditions that we wouldn't inflict on even animals. They give of their sweat and toil until their parts wear out, upon which they are tossed onto the trash heap like soiled tissue or crunchy socks. Robots deserve better.

But at least we can justify such casualties as "necessary" for the advancement of the arts of production and development. How can we possibly justify the glorious outlays of money and robot chattel for mere gladiatorial combat? If you cut robots, do they not grease?

Our culture is descending into a tailspin of debauchery and gluttony where we laugh as sentient robots careen across our screens and disembowel themselves for our amusement. The mighty empire of Rome once stood where we stand, and their defeat at the hands of the Germanic barbarians is well documented. If we do not turn from this dark path, then we might too look down the barrel of a Swiss rifle and say, "Pass the popcorn, you're blocking my view of the set."

Lets try hands off control!

[DaHat]

Am I the only one that is a little sick of the remote controlled battle bots, admit it, it would be interesting to see a couple fully autonomous bots going at it, completely independent of any external control. Heck 99% of the fun would be trying to build one of these.

(battlebots robotwars) && why

[mkbz]

i greatly prefer battlebots to robotwars for a myriad of reasons.

first being, watching a robot go thru an obstacle course is very, very boring.

second, the 'house robots' on robotwars have an unreasonable advantage, and don't present the same degree of opposition to all contestants. (i.e. it seems that some people get a much harder wallop than others.) and they do actual serious destruction to competitors robots, which stifles innovation (why would i want to invest a great deal of money/time into a robot if their much-too-favored 'house robot' snips and blowtorches and spikes the hell out of it?)

i think the head to head competition as seen in battlebots is the best combination of testing the builders' mechanical prowess AND driving abilities, with just enough arena obstacle to keep them on their toes. it's challenging a driver (or team) to be on both offense and defense simultaneously, while needing to be keenly aware of their environment (to avoid the arena hazards).

the robotwars 'courses' leave hardly enough room to maneuver, and by the time one gets themselves pointed in the right direction, there's already one or several hulking 'house robots' there waiting to take your creation to bits.

that's just my $0.02. oh, and the announcer on robotwars is so annoying i sometimes consider avoiding the program because of him alone. (too bad TLC seems to have found someone even MORE annoying for robotica :\ ).

Battlebots is the worst-produced show on TV

[Tony Shepps]

In my humble opinion.

Production problems in Battlebots:

• Scale ignored in shooting the battles. I was amazed to learn that the weight limit of some of the heavy classes is over 300 pounds. You aren't given a sense of how big and destructive these bots really are. Either some off-battle time should be spent watching a competitor destroying a common household object, or the playing field should be littered with things we recognize.
• Rules encourage lame battles. If one bot is just a tiny little wedge and the other has a huge mighty pick-axe, you know already the wedge is going to win. That's just plain wrong. Also, I was watching an episode where all three matches ended in utterly lame mechanical failures. Not KOs, just "...something's happened to his power. Now let's watch the contentant moving the joysticks in all directions and shrugging, for thirty seconds." Yawn.
• On air talent. What talent. Bill Nye is tragically underutilized and the rest of the team is, tragically, utilized. The interviews are meaningless, too short, and don't tell us very much. The announcers are predictable. Their faux excitement is faux.
• Everything else. Let's see, they refer to squares instead of corners for some unknown reason, announce the winning "square" even though we don't remember which bot was in which square. They have a referee whose job it is, apparently, turn on the power to the arena. Their use and choice of music is poor. The lighting is unexciting. Their description of the bots doesn't include details that would make it interesting. The viewer finds it impossible to pick a favorite, which is probably OK because the best bots lose anyway.

This is a country that specializes in making uneventful, boring activities exciting on TV. Battlebots manages to make a very exciting premise boring and uneventful.