BattleBots & ESPN Strike TV Deal

NMajik writes "Although BattleBots has been largely removed from the public eye since episodes stopped airing years ago, a new deal has recently been struck with ESPN to return combat robots to the living room. Episodes will be broadcast as a series on ESPNU and ESPN2 after filmed at the competition in June 2008. This is the first notable progress towards televised combat robotics in years."

Comments

Robot Wars...

[Wizard Drongo]

Dunno if any of you over the other side of the pond ever got this show, it stopped in 2003, and was presented by Craig Charles (oh he of Red Dwarf fame).
Was an awesome program, with a whole load of different teams, ranging from a 13 year old girl with her Dad to a major university grad team and a Army engineers team.
Was pretty decent in it's day. Maybe they should bring this back.

Re:Ah but it's fun to speculate...

[Torvaun]

This guy is going to kick ass in the experimental class.

The rules are here, if you don't mind pdfs.

Weapon types that aren't allowed in the normal class include electricity and electromagnetic weapons (no EMP or Tesla coils), weapons that require significant cleanup (sand, oil, liquids, ball bearings), weapons intended to obscure vision (smoke, strobe lights), thermal weapons (no explosives or cutting torches, although you can use explosives to, say, drive a piston), mechanism fouling weapons (nets, tarps, caltrops), and no mutually destructive mechanisms.

There are also restricted weapons. Projectiles are allowed, but must be on a tether of no more than 8' in length. Covering weapons are allowed, but must be rigid and controllable. Airbags are allowed, but must conform to the rules for pneumatics, and can't be used as mechanism fouling weapons when deflated. Flywheels need to be installed properly, so that they don't fly off or apart while spinning. Large springs (20 lbs of force to extend or compress) need to be armed by the bot, not manually, and need to be able to be released manually without causing damage to the person doing the releasing.