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BattleBots Delayed, Will Go Brains Over Babes
An anonymous reader writes "We got all excited earlier this week about robo-combat returning to TV with ESPN, but now PopMech super geek Erik Sofge talks to the folks at BattleBots and finds out that because of so many early entries, the competition will be delayed until at least November. The reason? Gone are the babes and predictable wedge fights, in are eager engineering students, a crazy ramp arena and lots of new rules. Worth the wait, or do we miss the Comedy Central version?"
Pah. The first (and last) time I watched one of these "battle bots" programmes, I was left thinking "where are the robots". All I saw was (somewhat dangerous) remote controlled toys.
When your battle bot can battle even somewhat autonomously, then I'll watch.
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... it's the bots that turn me on, so I'm not sure I understand what the loss would be.
(seriously though, I think focusing on the main content instead of "babes" will give the show much better longevity -- while Kari Byron can be pretty in MythBusters, that's not the main reason to why I watch that show)
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I'd love to see more programming that shows "nerds" / "geeks" / whatever you want to call us in a positive light. We've conquered the public programming sector (PBS, NPR, the cable channels with a scientific bent, etc), but we have made little success in the mainstream programming sector.
Seeing a pale skin dude (or chic!) on ESPN... workin' a bot... will be a wonderful day.
And I may actually watch ESPN! (I've got my system setup now so it automatically skips over the channel when surfing.)
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I guess the subject says it all. These are just fancy RC cars. I'd be about a million times more interested in seeing the FIRA RoboWorld Cup or RoboCup televised.
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I remember being SO excited for the BB premiere and being totally disappointed at how lame it felt to actually watch it. It was all WWE-style hyperactive and the announcers were just annoying as hell and wouldn't shut up with their inane drivel. I remember one bot had a cheesy head thing mounted on it and they went NUTS when it got knocked off, even though it was just a superficial piece and in no way connected to function of the actual robot.
Sounds like they're taking the right approach this time!
Blendo participates.
Watching some people running RC cars around a battle arena has zero interest for me. I watched the first episode back when it started, and then would occasionally hit it channel surfing, and it was lame IMHO. I understand what goes in to building the bots, and yes, that has some geek factor to it. Good job on the construction guys.
I would much rather see people putting some time into some programming, and letting the bots fight each other based on it. Anyone who grew up playing something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotwar, knows that it doesn't have to be anything super sophisticated, you don't need neuralnets and/or computer vision to pull this off. Sometimes a simple search and destroy algorithm can work. I guess it might not have the instant gratification if immediate combat a energy-drink infused audience might require. I think it could start an entire new generation into thinking about machine interaction, and who knows what kind of solutions could come out of it.
Call me when it gets interesting.
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As much of their crew are former competitors in the BattleBots league. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadblow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendo Grant's bot was Deadblow - it ranked #2 in the middleweight division and had quite the badass hammer (I remember it putting holes in a number of competitors). Jamie and Adam's robot was Blendo, and my favorite quote from the wikipedia page: "Blades attached to the shell caused grievous damage to its opponents, removing bodywork and in some instances causing them to be thrown over the Lexan safety shields into the audience. After two fights it was deemed too hazardous to compete by the event supervisors and the insurance company. It was given co-champion status in exchange for withdrawing from the competition."
Yeah... but am I crazy, or didn't Carmen Electra host? She at least made the show more tolerable. But yes, with some actual serious robots, the show might actually find some sort of engineering student cult following. Especially if they actually got a host that new what a servo was. (and got carmen back)
I was really disappointed with the Battle Bots on CC. I never could get into the episodes; they all felt really staged and predictable. The winner was always decided quickly and rarely had much trouble ascending through the ranks.
Also, the mayhem was just too limited. I wanted more sparks, more dismembered, twitching robot bits laying on the arena floor.
What I'd really like to see is different divisions, RC controlled robots with killer death-hammers, saws and drills. And another division with AI bots that triumph creatively. It would be cool to see a "survival of the fittest" type competition where the robots competed for resources in the form of tokens or light or something along those lines.
Whatever the new version is, I really don't want to see any more bimbos nor hear any more annoying play-by-play. I want innovation, creativity, sparks and most of all, destruction!
This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen... --Hobbes
Give the robots big guns and take away the audience. Shooting at a moving target while your moving will be a lot easier with some level of autonomy. The key is to make the weapons so devastating that the first one to make contact will usually win. This type of competition will favor machines that make some of their own decisions without direct human control. Autonomy will be necessary but not mandated.
First off, what did Comedy Central have to do with fighting robots? ESPN I sort of get (they call Poker a "sport", so I guess battlebots can be one, too), but why Comedy Central.
More to the point, I miss Battle Bots being televised, but I don't miss Comedy Central. The announcers were annoying, Carmen Electra was pointless, and they spent too much airtime dithering about nothing. The worst of it was that the camera angles and microphone pickup made the bots look like toys. Many of these machines took a team of guys to lift them out of the travel van and get them into the arena. Every year, they thickened the lexan around the arena, and every year, something managed to pierce it. These are nasty machines, but they never looked more powerful than an unmodded nerf gun.
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I absolutely loved Robot Wars when it was shown here in the UK, one of the tv hilights of the week for me, seeing machines bash the shit out of each other is much more entertaining than any boxing match or wrestling match.
I'd heard about Battle Bots in the midst of watching Robot Wars and eventually one of the tv stations here aired a few shows, what a complete let down it was! there was some serious hostility of the opponents being portrayed on screen, wether it was real or staged it just felt nasty compared to the UK's Robot Wars where the teams would help each other out because they were mainly there for the whole entertainment & experience, not to gloat over their wins.
I would hope there's more friendly rivalry in the upcoming Battle Bots instead of nasty "I'm better than you" type taunts & attitude, but being an American show I don't hold out much hope, except perhaps that someone will torrent the shows because I really miss seeing robots beat the crap out of each other, half because of the fights and strategy involved and half because I love seeing the ingenuity and designs of the robots.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
Watch again. There's no actual fighting. What you're watching is a loosely choreographed dance. In the sense that the moves are intricate* and technically demanding, but they're not particularly timed to music or necessarily even a particular order.
*some of them. There seems to be an awful lot of "stomp the mat and punch the air while the other guy leaps backward" wherein the aforementioned punch doesn't end up anywhere near a position that could be misunderstood as having actually connected.
some of my favorite matches had only-a-wedge-on-wheels bots! it was funny watching them take one or two hits from a pneumatic pick hammer and stop working, or even better, get flipped over and impaled again.
Well when I said that I'd offer my suggestions for free in the old thread I didn't think they actually would.
Oh well, my payment will be in the form of a show that I'll definately be watching.
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Put some of these into fights:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster-Miller_TALON
And I would watch it.
a remade deadblow would be fun to see.
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And the obligatory youtube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFQ4X8g2byU
The Comedy Central version was just pathetic. At first it started off talking about the robots, but slowly turned into a joke. I blame both the contestants and Comedy Central. I blame Comedy Central for taking the show and taking away the nerdy aspects and instead focusing on marketing the show to more people and they did a pretty bad job at that with my next reason.
I blame the contestants for not letting their robots get smashed to bits. Most battles ended with the winner giving pity to the other contestant. Only a few battles featured the other robot getting destroyed. I wanted to see the robots fight to the death. Its like the money shot of the show. They first discuss the robot and how it works, all the aspects behind building it, etc. Then they go at it. I know alot of hardwork go into building these but seriously, when you put your machine in a arena full of dangerous obstacles and a competing robot, do you expect it to come out peacefully.
The majority of battles ended with a robot malfunctioning on the first blow and then if it didn't work after 30-60 seconds they ended the round.
Would it be so hard to find both in the same package?
*runs*
Given where student robotics already is, and given the software availability, what more can you possibly need for a perfectly viable autonomous robot league for Battlebots?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I'll take everything everyone else has said about autonomy...that is being an actual robot...as given. You want to get me to watch? Lose the Lexan encased "arena" and the studio audience.
Put the thing somewhere like the Bonneville salt flats and make it anything goes. And I do mean "anything": strong corrosives, blowtorches, missile weapons, guns, woodchippers, explosives , or anything else destructive the builders can think of. I've seen all the hammers, wedges, and spinny things I care to. Bring on some real robot war .
- Bonus mass allowance for autonomous robots. Remote control is neat and all that, but real robots have senors and logic (and flamethrowers)
- Bonus mass allowance for legged robots. Additionally, there should be terrain features that favor legged bots over wheeled bots. Steps and potholes come to mind. Potholes with flamethrowers.
- Large bonus mass allowance for bipedal legged robots. Hey, if you can make a bot walk and smash things then you're doing alright. If it walks and carries a flamethrower it is just about ideal.
- A venue where flame and projectile weapons are safe (and encouraged). The ultimate bots from the previous incarnation of the series tended towards those that stored up huge amounts of angular momentum. Without the ability to counter this huge offensive potential with countermeasures such as nets or chains or flails these bots were almost unstoppable. I'm not sure how a flamethrower would help here, but flamethrowers make for great TV.
Finally, using the aforementioned flamethrowers, get rid of the WWE style announcers.Peter
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You mean we should have Warhammer: 4000 volts?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Where are the EMP guns? Hell, where are the guns, period?
There's no reason people have to be particularly close to the action, so take the gloves off.
Mullet?
Sorry, just too tempting by half.
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I haven't watched since they got rid of Bill Nye. That took the credibility out of what was left. Then he was replaced with a dumber than dirt face with boobs to get more teenage viewers. Hear that? That is the sound of any actual enthusiast switching the channel.
Engineering students is good, but bring back the damn babes!!!
That's what destroyed BattleBots in comparison to Robot Wars, the wrestling style comments. Highly fake, highly American, and highly annoying.
Why would I want to see some bulky duo of Americans talking about robots fighting, when I could actually watch robots fighting? The commentators are necessary if you want to take something that is essentially dull, and make it exciting, such as American Football (great moments of tactical play interspersing boring, short maneuvering). But in this case... Robots! FIGHTING! Not dull!
Sofge is a contrarian jerk whose only goal is to stir up messes so that he can gain from the attention. This is the "super geek" who blasted the Wii and, as a way of demonstrating a complete inability to connect the dots, he bashed Gary Gygax after Gygax's death. His bashing of Gygax was monumentally stupid because his argument was essentially this: There are much better RPGs than Dungeons and Dragons today, therefore, we ought to remember Gygax as the guy who invented the shitty RPG. He seems to completely miss the fact that none of the games which he talks about as being better than D&D, would likely exist had it not been for Gygax, who pretty much invented the genre. That's like arguing we should remember Thomas Edison as the guy who invented shitty lightbulbs or Henry Ford as the guy who made shitty cars just because there are better versions of those products available today.
As far as I'm concerned, Sofge is no geek. He just likes to stir things up for attention. I'm not going to follow links to his stories anymore and whenever his name is mentioned, I'm going to raise these issues. Not because I have any specific place in my heart for Gygax or the Wii, but because I'm not going to support someone whose writings are largely there just to be controversial and to get the writer attention.
Given that the last Battlebot Wars resulted in a thousand robots of essentially similar design (i.e. wedge), emphasizing strategy and tactics over design by requiring entrants to start with the same basic platform makes for a much more interesting show. For example, all robots should look something like this: http://www.northernlightstactical.com/TurboTortoise/Accessories.htm and be equipped with remotely operated paintball guns. The arena should be outdoors on dirt. There will be various and sundry obstacles to navigate around. The object will be to hit your opponent with paintballs.
It just got worse when Carmen Electra came in. The "set of giant golden nuts" jokes just kept making it worse and then they had the stupid mini-music videos with her just gyrating around. Sure, let her interview the people, but put her in an autoshop jumpsuit or something.
The announcers weren't that bad... I know people complained about them, but they kept things moving fairly smoothly.... Bill Nye was in the first (or second or both??) season, and under-used... He could have had a better role...
This is going to be a time where online content can really supplement the show and make it interesting for the geeks who want to see the interviews with the builders and some of the inner workings that won't make it onto ESPN.
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....isn't another WWE style robot combat show with little substance beyond being a fancy radio controlled car. Instead, how about bringing us shows with robot competitions where true ingenuity, intelligence and cunning are the major attraction vs a bigger hammer or spike on a wedge.
For example, did anyone ever watch "Robot Rivals" on the DIY channel over the last couple years? Not only did you get robotic competition, you got to watch each team construct a robot specific to each task with a fully stocked supply shelf as well as incorporating a common household item into their design as part of it's overall functions... sort of like the Junkyard Wars series on Discovery Channel. The contestants on each team were even students from competing universities who actually know what the hell they're doing.
If you want autonomy, how about putting a deeper spotlight on DARPA-style challenges? Most of the shows you see on this stuff is far too focused on the results of the challenges, and not nearly enough on the concept, planning and development stages. These challenges probably do far more to advance the field of robotics and artificial intelligence than any box on wheels wielding a sawblade ever will.
Finally, how about getting the viewers more involved with modernized versions of Mind Rover or encouraging more people to pick up a game and simulation tool like Unity, and getting them to develop competative AIs for it?
There's a lot of ways one could go with this, but as long as money/ratings is a primary concern, I'm afraid many of them will go largely unused as far as the general public is concerned.
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