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400 Battle Bots Fight, Toss Enemies At RoboGames Competition
Andre writes "The 6th annual RoboGames were held in San Francisco last weekend. They welcomed a horde of 400 non-sentient, metallic warriors to do violent battle — against each other, of course. This army of remote-controlled and autonomous combat robots, along with walking humanoids, soccer 'bots, sumo 'bots and even androids that do kung-fu, was put to the test. Among the big winners was Canadian-made 'Ziggy' — one of the combatants in the 340-pound, super-heavyweight division (the biggest division) — who took home a gold medal for the fourth year in a row. The bionic brute proved its might against its final opponent, the 'Juggernaut,' by tossing it around like an empty pop can (and promptly making a mockery of its name) using a pneumatic flipper. Ziggy's newly-improved weapon results in unwanted (but totally cool) free-flying lessons for its opponents. At full power, the flipper can launch an opponent to the arena ceiling."
baby
Aeroespacio.org
EVAR.
That is *awesome*. How is this not on TV anymore? Anyone know if it's on the Internet someplace? (other than really awful shaky YouTube crap.)
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
Is we don't talk about robot fight club. The Second rule is ...
*pulls out a flash card*
Oh, ah no smoking.
I remember watching battlebots and the matches were always good unless one of the bots was a flipbot (what ziggy is, and now almost all of them are cause it's an incredibly overpowered design) and feel that in such competitions flipbots should be banned.
Toss firsties at FrostPost competition
Arena Ceiling Cat is dodging incoming flying robots...
Yeah thats how it starts off "ohhh awwww look cute little robots arent they funny"
Then later its with the running and the screaming and the shooting and buildings blowing up the time travel. Then its with the "Hello this is a final recorded message from john connor last of the humans"
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beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
He'd have torn that Flipper to shreds with a DFA attack!
Oh sure, he'd probably have a few broken bones to hide, but who wouldn't believe a BBS operator in Muncie could program a fully mobile humanoid robot?
I won't spoil this but if you haven't seen the episode of the Simpson's where Bart is "helped" by Homer to compete in a robot competition you absolutely must. I think it was one of the funniest episodes EVER at least for us slashdotters. (Funnier even than the treehouse of horrors!).
Has anyone ever been caught "participating" in one of these events in the way Homer did?
Remote control cars with armor and weapons strapped on actually.
I understand that the reason for the form factor in this environment, but please, let's be realistic about this. This isn't anything exciting from a tech perspective. Hell, I could have seen the -exact same- thing 9 years ago on the original battlebots. At least that had Bill Nye.
As someone who works in the ABC/ESPN hierarchy, and is also a big nerd, I was blown away when rumor was that ESPN was bringing back the BattleBots brand to television. Eventually it was official that ESPN was looking to display a robot fighting competition on ESPNU (the College brand for ESPN) and see how much interest there was in it. The competition was between College teams and wasn't nearly the production level of the BattleBots show that was on Comedy Central years before.
And unfortunately that all fell through...nothing ever came out of it. ESPN didn't show any robot competition on any of its branded stations (or even on the web at ESPN360).
BattleBots on Comedy Central was amazing back in the day. High end production values, commentary and color analysis, and of course machines killing each other. Live crowd reactions, story lines, personalities (of the drivers)....I can't believe ESPN missed this opportunity.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/08/03/11/064233/BattleBots-amp-ESPN-Strike-TV-Deal
http://www.battlebots.com/BattleBots.com/Events.html
I guess CBS Sports Online is going to put up footage eventually of the competition.
Either way I remember rooting for Bio-Hazard vs Vlad the Impaler as much as I root for Sox vs Yankees.
I wish stuff like this would make a comeback. Especially because it's a nice way to generate interest in science, robotics, mechanics, engineering, math, and critical thinking skills for children as well as highly entertaining.
Lastly YouTube proving it's worth for me once again:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Battlebotvideos
I think you can figure out what kind of videos are on that channel...
The "battle bots" are mostly the usual stupid R/C "battery-motor-wheels" stuff. But some of the humanoid hobbyist robots on display are getting good. Dynamixel servos, which have useful feedback to the controller, are taking over. (They have a 1mb/sec polled serial link shared by all the servos. It's RS-485, which is 1970s technology, but that's progress over the usual one-way PWM interface.) The latest prototype Dynamixel servos can reach 500 degrees/sec, which means there's hope of making legged running work. Some of the humanoid robots have a 6DOF inertial unit, although balancing software is way below the Big Dog level and none of the humanoids had force-sensing feet.
The better hobbyist humanoids are almost at the hardware level at which Asimo/Big Dog performance becomes possible. The more advanced robot hobbyists now understand about ZMP. We're getting there.
For better coverage, see Robots-Dreams, which also covers the Japanese hobbyist robot scene.
. . . why the hell not? They seem to be really interested in robot drones these days. And they already fund an "Robot SUV through the desert" challenge. The next phase should be robots, that can take out other robots. Maybe flip bots will prevail? Or maybe a Dalek-Thingie with a chainsaw will slice it in half first? Ok, The Doctor's K-9, armed with a Hellfire missle?
Only empirical evidence will tell us. Wake up DARPA! Get that checkbook out, real soon!
Now *that* would be entertainment.
Actually, now that I think about it, they probably already stage these exhibitions at Aberdeen Proving Ground . . . but the public is not invited to watch.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
...when the robots eventually take over and kill all humans, do you think this day will be remembered as sort of a Robot Memorial Day? Will it be marked like we mark 9/11 or 12/7?
Alright, what the hell does 'remote-control autonomous' even mean? I think we're getting scammed by calling it that. If it's just 'remote control', then I doubt very much it's what could be called 'robot'. Robotic, maybe, but otherwise it's just humans against humans.
Battlebots did indeed have production values, but I always hated the show because they were just fancy remote controlled cars.
I want to see real human crafted AI having to decide what is up in the arena with saws and flame and terrible liquids. I want spectators to be required to sit no less than a half-mile away behind protective screens - and also have to wear goggles and helmets.
Robot fighting could be really fun, if done right.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I say don't ban flipbots.
Flipbots are weak, a team just needs to exploit the weakness. Look at Ziggy, after it flips you it's totally exposed.
What about an Enveloper bot that grabs the flipper as it is thrust underneath and uses the combination of the flip and its own mass to tear the flipper off?
What about a Foldbot that when you flip it, simply has half of it fold over the other half and use the action to drive a spike into the other bot?
That's a lot of energy the flipbots are giving away for free. Don't let it go to waste.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Thanks for the link. Something like this (or this) is a lot more interesting (IMO) than the rolling wedge type of robot that's so common in this type of competition.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
ultimately to an actual Terminator style killer android. It's bound to. Give America's boundless and insatiable Pentagon and its parasitical enable in the military/industrial complex some group within the political class will urge the military brass to build them. Look at the logic. DARPA money for the universities and think tanks, big contract money for the war industries, big new budgets for the Pentagon, jobs for congressional supporters districts, and no more worrying about casualty reports on the Six O'clock news. Everyone body wins! Until Sky Net nukes us all.
"If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead stuff."
There were only ~63 battlebots there. The other robots were mostly autonomous, and were not involved in combat.
I really wish they would ditch the flat floor concept in RC bot combat. It leads to very boring battles largely between flippers and wedges zipping around. If it were run on a dirt or sculpted 3D course, competitor tactics and design would be more radical/diverse to compensate. Wedges and flippers would be useless with 30 degree slopes and hilltops.
I've watched countless battles but I can't muster 1/10th of the enthusiasm some of these announcers seem to have. They're literally losing their mind when all the bots are doing is sitting there bumping in to each other. They desperately need to relax the rules on weapons. I assume this is why we don't see projectiles, explosives, electric shock, etc. As well as form factor. I can't imagine faced with all the flipper bots that someone hasn't just thought "Why don't I turn this guy into some kind of human style shape, or something without a circular base?"
keep the competitors safe in protected booths and let the bots loose with crazy weapons and arenas. It might prove to be actually be interesting.
I just wanted to take a moment to remember MindRover, a great game that never really got to see it's full potential.
For the uninformed, MindRover was a game where you'd build autonomous robots and program them for a wide range of events, ranging from races to combat. The programming was done through a process called "wiring", where you'd link your robot's physical components (sensors, motors, weapons, etc...) to logic circuits of varying complexity through flow charts.
(It sounds tedious, but it gets to be fun once you figure out how it works.)
The game originally started out on Windows and was later ported to linux and Mac OS X.
If you can still find it, it's worth a look.
In the mean time, has anyone found some other robotics apps like MindRover? I found one called WebBots a few months ago, but it carries a $3,200 price tag. (Not exactly ideal for "playing around"...)
8==8 Bones 8==8
Battlebots at a bankers convention
It may not do any good, but there's something to be said for entertainment value.
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