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400 Battle Bots Fight, Toss Enemies At RoboGames Competition

Posted by Soulskill on from the why-are-we-training-them-to-fight dept.

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."

11 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Hasta la vista by juanergie · · Score: 2, Funny

    baby

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    Aeroespacio.org
  2. The arena ceiling!? by JCSoRocks · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.)

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    You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
    1. Re:The arena ceiling!? by hairykrishna · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It was boring because, like the UK Robot Wars, they made the program entirely wrong. Nobody cares about the teams back story. The commentators knew nothing about it and added nothing. In a half hour program there was about 5 minutes of actual robots fighting.

      There was potential there. Some battles were entertaining. It's also not true to say that there was ever any massive destruction (in the UK one at least). The 'spinners' with 30kg+ flywheels occasionally totally annihilated an opponent. 'Razer' in the UK also finished of a number of opponents with a hydraulically powered crushing weapon in a fairly permanent way.

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      "Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
  3. First rule of Robot Fight club by gijoel · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is we don't talk about robot fight club. The Second rule is ...

    *pulls out a flash card*

    Oh, ah no smoking.

  4. Flipbots = imba by Hubbell · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Flipbots = imba by sentientbeing · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There was a good episode of UK scrapheap challenge where the teams converted full-size remote control cars for a smackdown in an arena marked out in a field.

      Lots of energy, noise, damage and spectacle and the teams were safely 300 metres away on a hill. theres no reason they cant do that here. just isolate the audience and get some decent weapons going on.

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      beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
  5. im not fooled by sentientbeing · · Score: 4, Funny

    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
  6. 'bots? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  7. ESPN....man.... by VinylRecords · · Score: 2, Informative

    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...

  8. Ignore the "battle bots". Check out the humanoids. by Animats · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  9. *not* 400, it was 63 - I was there by societyofrobots · · Score: 3, Informative

    There were only ~63 battlebots there. The other robots were mostly autonomous, and were not involved in combat.