Mathematica and BattleBots

hesheboy writes "Wolfram.com has a story about building a battlebot with Mathematica: 'October 28, 2002--Looking for action with brains-over-brawn appeal? William McHargue, a freelance physicist and long-time Mathematica user, is one of many who find this combination in BattleBots, the new fighting-robot craze. "With BattleBots, one can be aggressive and yet nobody gets hurt," says McHargue. Recently, McHargue was featured in Mechanical Engineering magazine for work on Tesla's Tornado, his BattleBot.'"

Comments

hmmm

[lingqi]

Maybe he is onto something design-wise - but I don't think it's "interesting."

What I mean is (drawing on real-life examples) that while bacteria and viruses (yes it's spelled viruses, see here), I don't really think that's what we are looking for when doing battlebots.

for the longest time, rambots (bots that basically has a lot of power and a wedge shape) would win consistently. This guy's little contraption is not much different. the bot still depends on a very rudamentary skill to attack / defend. - the only difference is that he usese Mathematica for modelling vs. say, ProE (which I think would be better anyhow).

real brain over brawn would be, let's say, an (almost) universal manipulator, and enough sensors, reactory circuits, and capability that the robot will make reasonable decisions to duck, block, parry, jump, or just (calculatedly) take an attack, and then be able to exploit the other robot's weakness at the same time.