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Interview with Battlebots Champion
Scoop writes "With the fifth season of BattleBots debuting a few days ago on Comedy Central, UGO.com chatted up contestant Jim Smentowski, creator of champion BattleBot, Nightmare. Jim shared his views on the hit show, his experience with Gary Coleman and robotics in general. No word yet on the rumored love-child between Smentowski and BB host, Carmen Electra."
... I want a return of the underground grassroots robot battles. Maybe an underground meet in back alley kinda thing, no corporate sponsors, a run what ya brung kinda deal, and if you can't do it without a full support team, then so be it. I'll be happy to organize the first ine in RTP.
When the robots become autonomous, battling without human intervention, then I'll start showing real interest. That, and lets include some serious offensive weapons. Sure, spinning around like a mad top is ok, but how about projectiles? Flamethrowers? Tazer devices? That's what I'm talking about... And maybe serious, bot-bunching obstacles. Sure you'd have to hide the audiance behind bulletproof/shatterproof glass and make them sign waivers, but hey, it'd all be hella fun.
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Banner and Slashdot-sized box ads are one thing, but those full-screen in the middle of the article ones are REALLY annoying.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Battlebots should really be called Battle-RCs, but who cares. The show is good clean fun and is inspiring the next generation to inch another step closer to creating real robots. Maybe in another 25 years or so, we'll get there. Back to my regular programming...
So this one time my MIT professor told me, "Sir, you should run Linux." So I do. Every day. I love KDE/QT and XMMS. I still boot into M$ Winblows for gaming though. :( Fortunately I wear my tin-foil hat while I do it to avoid the black helicopters reading my thoughts. :) I mean, I'm really worried about this being taken away from me! Ever since I lost my job at a dotcom (mostly just throwing foam darts at each other ;) ) when the bubble burst I've been very concerned about my freedoms and M$ invading them. Do you know what I mean?!? I've been out of work for months, but I'm not going to ask for money like a certain 'Lazlo' character. 'Nuff said!
Oops! Forgot the Franklin quote!
(note to parent: Another method for obtaining karma is starting the post with something like, "Mod me down if you will, it's only karma". Please update.)
No word yet on the rumored love-child between Smentowski and BB host, Carmen Electra.
Hmm, I wonder what Dave Navarro would have to say about that.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
I have seen both Battlebots and RobotWars (the original BBC program) and I would say the BBC version is better.
Yeah, I was treated pretty badly after the .com bubble burst, but now I study at MIT and use Linux in my CS studies. Oh yeah, we don't use any M$ products anywhere, even M$ hardware like mice and keyboards are OUT!
So, keeping in mind Ben Franklin's quote about sacrificing essential liberty, I decided to build a battle robot.
Is it just me or has the Battlebot bubble burst? Lately I find myself doing other things and sometimes even completely ignoring the TV when any of the robot battle shows are on.
How many times can you watch metal boxes slam into each other?
Boring!
"Ok....they're sitting there. It doesn't look like...OH WAIT!!.... No, no, nothings moving. False alarm. Our ratings are plummeting and...(listens into headset...No! I will not do that! (listens some more) Oh, fine. (loudly) My shirt! I believe that my shirt is falling off! Oh no!"
*Prepares for REAL ULTIMATE offtopic moderation ;)*
By the way, have you noticed the privacy statement at Battlebots. Have you noticed that they reserve the right to supply 3rd party companies with your info??
I haven't heard about any BSD based bots yet - have you?.
I would also like to whine about "the lack of jobs where you get paid to fire foam darts at colleagues". </test>
When the robots become autonomous, battling without human intervention, then I'll start showing real interest.
You'd probably be interested in RoboCup Soccer. The goal of this ambitious robotics project is to develop a team of fully autonomous robots that can defeat the human champion team of soccer by the year 2050.
Does anyone remember his fight with Son of Yachi? That was the best hit I ever saw.
And in this corner! He puts the "evil" in "weevil", he will make you cry, and he is not your father's can of corn....The Human Robot!
Announcer Guy 1: That was quite a match!
Announcer Guy 2: Thats right Guy#1! Lets go to the floor with our large chested eye-candy!
Carmen Elektra: Hi Guys! I'm here with the winner of this match, Middle-aged car shop guy! So tell me, how were you able to pull off this exciting and lucrative win?
Middle-aged Car Shop Guy: Uhhhhhh, I like, ran into the other guy, and the hammer thing hit it. A lot.
Close-up of Carmen's Breasts
Announcer Guy 1: Join us next time for another exciting edition... of Battle Breasts! uhh Bots!
A decent appendium to the Karma howto would be a small list of jokes sure to gain a chuckle in the right context. Applied with the right combination of the formentioned rules could earn you another +2 or +3.
..."Might" as in it depends on who's had their prozac for the day. Doncha wish you could mod lower than -1? ^__^ I already had a +4 Interesting anyway. Now I want that +9 Ogre slaying knife you promised.
1) "...Imagine a beowolf cluster of those!"
2) "Now all we need is to mount lasers on the head of a shark..."
Lastly, never, ever, EVER forget to mention the last piece of obscure hardware you installed Linux on. ie; "I installed Linux on my ceiling fan and boy does it fly now!"
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated
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I wonder what Jim has done to prevent what happened to Nightmare When he met the horizontal spinner Son of Wyachi.......damn that was a hit.
Hmmm... It sounds good, but my first impression is that it wouldn't fly simply because the disparity in engineering between robots and humans. I guess it could work given the right combination of materials and some pretty stellar programming.
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I guess one way to limit the liability is to limit the amount of flammables one unit could carry, thereby limiting the explosive power should something go horribly wrong. The teathering is a good idea too. Maybe a "Limited" series with an audiance and a robot "unlimited series" with remote braodcasting and all the weapons you can mount.
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Actually, I figured something like that, but didn't know BB's exact saftey standards. Thanks ^__^
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Comedy Central stuck to COMEDY? Yeah, you know, that wacky thing in THEIR NAME! They cancelled a great show like Upright Citizens Brigade for things like Battlebots. Cancel or move Battlebots elsewhere. Put on some new shows, or repeats of COMEDY shows.
UGO.com chatted up contestant Jim Smentowski, creator of champion BattleBot, Nightmare.....No word yet on the rumored love-child between Smentowski and BB host, Carmen Electra.
If by chance Carmen and Smentowski are together, and he can't "get it up", I'm sure he would then build himself one hell of an implant.
Table-ized A.I.
Autonomous bots seems like a good idea at first, but I think it'd get boring.
I think whole problem has to do with how primitive bots are. Its basically remote control bumper cars... I'd imagine a bot with a FPS-style control scheme could dominate the competition and raise the bar for the whole scene.
What advertisements?
I'd like to see more regional events. The best bet for those not wanting to put up with all the BS associated with competing at Battlebots should really try to attend one of the street fights that are springing up around the country. The rules are more relaxed and you won't have to sign away all your legal rights to your bot.
When all else fails, run.
God this shit is boring.
I seem to recall the Battlebox is made of really thick Lexan sheets. The problem is that the more destructive you let the robots be, the harder it is to even predict what measures you need to take to protect the audience. Say your bot has a flamethrower - what happens if a pulverizer makes the gas tank go boom? Now you have an explosion, fire, and a very heavy hammer flying through the air. For that matter, how do you know a wire hasn't lost some insulation and is just waiting to spark while the judge is standing next to it after the fight? How about gas leaks?
That's another problem. With the current design, it's easy for people working in the Battlebox to know when they could, conceivably, be in danger. If they're in reach of a blade or arm, they might be in harm's way. If they aren't, they're probably safe. But as soon as you talk about ranged weapons, or even super-powerful obstacles, you increase the risk to the people, and the expense required to run the contest.
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I was just thinking, the betips.net site used to use the BeOS filesystem as a spiffy database - read about it at the site - and beos was designed from the word go to work with large multimedia projects, huge video files, that sort of thing. Might BeOS be a good platform for the sort of on-the-fly image recognition software a kick-ass autonomous battlebot would need?
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Anyone know the Smiling Guy's email address?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Oh god. If you think Battlebots is WW(F/E)ified, then run in fear from "Robot Wars: Extreme Gladiators" or whatever the hell it's called on TNN. Last night, a friend of mine said it was on. I said it was pretty weak, he said "So?" and we both watched it anyhow.
Repeatedly I was proven -exactly- how right I was in the first place. Every bot was a really pathetic contestant compared to the ones on Battlebots, and the hosts... My god. The only way I could describe it was as Battlebots without the class. The bots sucked, the fights were -boring- as hell and the only bright spot - surprisingly - was Mick Foley formerly AKA "Mankind" doing the post-fight interviews. He also got to tell the teams who won, which was a nice touch too. As an interviewer, his major problem was screwing up the name of a bot, and still using the facial expressions you'd expect from a wrestler. He did, overall, provide a -much- better interaction with the builders. Less fluff.
I think Battlebots needs to hire Foley, and the rest of "Robot Wars" can just go suck eggs. Even the contestants sucked. One kid looked like Brian Dennehy's "Mini-Me" and the guys who won the show all acted like wanna-be Foleys. Sad. Very sad.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Absolutely. As said friend, I'd like to apologize for dragging THK into that piece of drek. The bots -sucked-, none of them was able to do any real damage to any of the others, and we both spent most of the show rooting for one of the others to set the fur-covered bunnybot on fire. It's just pathetic.
RW wetdream: Son of Whyachi vs. Sir Killalot.
When all else fails, run.
I figure a site like Slashdot would have users who know some history -- Doesn't anybody remember SRL (Survival Research Laboratories)? And am I the only one who noticed the BattleBots insignia looks like a Slave Pit/GWAR design? Sure, I've seen the British Craig Charles show, but SRL was seriously before any of this (early 80s) and a lot better.
Nightmare is no champion, it has never won the Heavyweight Battlebots division.
If they wanted to talk to a champion, they should have spoken to Tony Buchignani, the owner of the only undefeated battlebot, Hazard.
And where the hell is the Alton Brown interview?
Battle bots is one of the better reasons to own a tivo. Lets face it.. There is a LOT of fluff between fights.. and some of it gets quite repetitive.. I can watch an hour battle bot show in less than 15 minutes (I also skip past the shoving matches..)
-Jason
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
Don't forget the automatic "+2 Funny" for the word "pr0n". However, anything which mentions specific knowledge of pornography, including names of movies and actors, is modded down to "-1 Redundant", as it is assumed all Slashdot readers already know these names from their raging porno habits sustained though days spent jacking off with one eye on the Slashdot webpage and the other on the splooge-covered 13" Magnavox.
Gary Coleman is a robot?
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
Common, you're making it sound fun! I'd say limit the amount of onboard fuel allowed, first. As fas a projectiles flying through the air and striking the audiance with the greatest of ease, you'd have to perform worst case senarios and otherwise trash an arean before you allow the audiance in.
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You have to sign a waiver, and you risk getting hurt from numerous machines that shoot projectiles, flames, and extremely loud noises. Now they should be hosting the real battlebots...
That's all. I will still watch the show, but there are many improvements that can still be made. The competition is even worse, ala' Robot Wars (the US version anyway) where the bots are piles of junk, the drivers spend most of the match crashing their bot into the arena walls because of a complete lack of driving skill, and the house bots decide almost every match.
Just want to say that this was interesting interview getting us to look at how him and the other builders are really in it to have fun. Some of the posters have said they don't like Carmen Electra or the overall flash of the show, but they seem to be getting a kick out of it and it's not like they take the pomp and circumstance too seriously.
I am curious about how he feels about people going in with a less-technical mindset than himself. People are going to start bringing in pre-designed bots. There was that one kid last season who just up and bought his bot from someone else.
(By the way, Complete Control is the most interesting bot out there, IMHO)
Take a look at www.robotcombat.com
Too bad they can't combine Robot Wars with, say, Junkyard Wars....three teams get 10 hours to make their own demolition bots....from whatever they can find in the parts bin....now that would add a new level of interest....
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There was an episode of junkyard wars that did this. They took 2 old V6 beaters and converted them into giant battlebots to fight in a 100 yard ring.
:-)
Its was great at the end one tore the hell out of the axel of the other and it went careening out of control at 45mph into a dirt mound.
If battle bots was like that I would watch every day.
Battle bots used to be much better before all the lawsuits. If your curious to see what happend to hmonigize all this then look up all the legal battles over who owned battle bots and you will see what really killed this idea.
"Don't mess with him, he taunts the happy fun ball."
. It would be nice to see Linux based bot beating a Microsoft based one to hell and back.
:(
There would be no clear winner as the MS bot would explode for no reason taking half the arena with it. Much like our exchange server recently did
"Don't mess with him, he taunts the happy fun ball."
Yeah...they actually did that twice as I recall...but there's rather a difference between remote controled demolition derby and machines with sledge hammers, buzz saws, and so on....now if they were attaching concrete saws to v-6's.... *drool*
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Get it?
That's where they're pilfering their formats from, not to mention announcers!
The problem for them is that they CANNOT do the morality plays with robots.... Yet. At this point, the gear and mayham angle is still predominate. I guess the sponsors plan to draw the same audience as demolision derby and monster truck shows. So don't expect much changes to occur.
For more engineering oriented contests, check out Tech Games or Junkyard War or Robotica.
Trollaxor.com's host had to kill the site since increased traffic ate resources like a starving Nigerian in an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Trollaxor is now looking for a new host. His site will return with many more features than before.
And oh yeah, a much nicer color scheme.
Cool, so now I don't even have to watch any of his fights all season long - I already know that he's the champion. Thanks Slashdot for ruining Battlebots season 5!
If I remember right they attempted 2, 1 car actually had an attack weapon attached to the roof that had a spinning chain on the top, though the weapon was rather useless. I still say not a bad job for 8 or so hours work.
Now if it was on the scale of battle bots and people had time to develop thier weapons we could see some real carnage.
Only thing is once you get to that size if you loose you bot its 20 grand down the drain as opposed to 3 - 5 grand.
"Don't mess with him, he taunts the happy fun ball."
Thanks for pointing that out - guess it kinda pokes a gaping hole in my "Safety" theory.
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Despite what you do, no matter however hard you try to oppress my views; I will always be there. Such is the nature of the English Troll. Infinite patience and infinite tolerance.
Thanks,
-The English Troll.
P.S: Your moderation was rather sad, and only proves you are homosexual. Finnish girls -are- the most attractive.