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Robots Battle to the Death!
spiffy1 writes "BattleBots, a fighting tournament between remote-controlled robots, took place this weekend at Long Beach, California. Contestants built robots which were pit against other robots in the same weight class (Kilobot, Megabot, and Gigabot), and tried to disable their opponent by ramming them, cutting them, or tossing them around in a DEADLY ARENA filled with ROTATING BLADES and NASTY SPIKES! The big winner in both the "Gigabot Duel" and the "Best Engineering" categories was "BioHazard" - a wide flat thing with a massive flipping arm. Check out the zdnet article and some pictures and videos at ZDTV. "
I'm sorry sir, but your flame-throwing, machine-gun mounted, automated tanklet isn't allowed in the arena. Didn't you get our memo?
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
You should check out Survival Research Laboratories. Cool experiments with vandigraph generators powered by Volkswagon engines not to mention killer robots.
So my phased plasma pulse-laser (in the 40 watt range) wouldn't be okay either. Damn!
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
oops .....
"(otherwise there would have been a lawsuit between them that was dropped later)"
should be
otherwise there wouldn't
sorry
Need a Catering Connection
Anyone know of a less restricted tournament?
Yes, I believe it's called "The LA Freeway system".
-ElJefe
Hmmmm. This would have been far, far spiffier if they were actually autonomous, rather
than large, armed remote-control vehicles.
It says somewhere on the battlebots web page that they tried this a couple of years ago, but it was embarassingly boring - the robots just wandered around bumping into each other for 5 minutes.
Why is the universe here? -Well, where else would it be?
Biohazard won last year too. While effective, it's kind of a cheap ploy if you ask me. Just avoiding the other robots' heinous attacks and then flipping them over? If everyone did that it'd be a really boring contest.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Only if you throw it at the opponent, cause damage through heat or EMP, or irradiate the judges.
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 looked all over the ZDnet page as best I could and couldn't see anything other than the 3 video files on the front page. I can't view them from work, but that hardly seems like anything special. Are there video files of the various fights, or what?
just because it's not original doesn't mean it's not entertaining
I'm gessing that this is a mutation of Robot Wars ,the winner even had the same name and design as one that completed in Robot Wars.
Probably one of the funniest robot decapitations wasn't at this event, but in the first-ever robot table-tennis championship, where one contestant sliced itself in half with a guilotine-style "bat".
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)
Must be one tough S.O.B. ...
TheGeek
http://www.geekrights.org
TheGeek
http://www.geekrights.org
Kill the monkey
ooo a kibobot.
didn't sergar argic do that a long time ago?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
(ack... I think I'm posting twice... sorry)
I think lots of non-programmers find the idea of an intelligent robot compelling... The fact that they don't understand how it works doesn't make it any less impressive. It's an idea that has driven science fiction writers for decades.
/* The beatings will continue until morale improves. */
see http://www.battlebots.com/rules.html section 11.2.2. "The use of any liquid as a weapon shall be forbidden." it's really great to see how many forbidden weapon ideas have been posted because no one has read the rules.
One Must Fall 2097!!! ie robots battling it out in rooms w/ spikes, blades, etc.
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
Next time on Celebrity DeathMatch... Mars Sojourner vs. a Cuisinart.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Fully powered flight is not allowed but is seems ground effect is.
This space unintentionally left unblank.
An autononomous robot would be much more complicated: you would need some sort of sensor input so you would know how and when (and where) to attack, you would need some sort of on-board computer that can handle the inputs, and you would need to interface all of this to all the motors, solenoids, etc. I would guess this would add about $500 (US) to the price of a robot. However, I would think there would be some interest in this; it probably would not be too difficult to add in an autonomous category at something like Robot Wars or Battle Bots. It would probably be much more exciting to watch autonomous robots doing battle, as there would be a new level for error: poorly written code and failing sensors.
However, wouldn't it be interesting to be able to see something like: "Robot running Linux beats robot running Windows 2000"?
Now that could be a battle of the OSs!
...and the winning bot was encased in 1/4" of titanium. Good luck trying to axe/saw/cut through that.
...Tesla Coil on wheels. :)
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
"these are radio-controlled toys."
I write code all day so the last thing I want to do for a hobby is write more.
And as for "much cooler," it would only be that to about 0.02% of the population that would get it.
Dan Danknick
dan@teamdelta.com
Yea, at first I was impressed, but when I saw the RC part, the coolness factor went downhill..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
First they had Extreme Fighting. Which was banned. Now they have the same version only its catered to bots. Someone call those bots a lawyer. Violence will never diminish if people continously create these petty "sports"
Besides what exactly is the purpose of this? To see who has the best bot? Please this is going a bit too far.
Want Root?
The problem with having it as an autonomous competition would be the cost. Having autonomous robots compete in soccer, table tennis, and so on is okay, since all the robots survive at the end. But in an event such as BattleBots, the objective is to destroy the opponent.
If they were to make it autonomous, most of the competitors could not afford to build them, and those few who could both afford and design such machines, would not be willing to send it to the arena to be torn to pieces by some other robot (or arena hazard).
By keeping it relatively cheap to compete, you encourage people of all backgrounds and ages to enter. The teams are as varied as they come. There are teams of folks who produce industrial robots for a living; teams who produce Hollywood animatronics for movies such as Men In Black, Mighty Joe Young, Gremlins II; mom-and-pop teams; and even one robot built by an early-teenage girl.
I would prefer if they kept the format of the competition as it is, and simply added an autonomous class for those few who could afford it.
Later.
The judges (if any survive) may rule it as using heat as a weapon. On the other hand, if you use it to take out the floor, and the opposing robot crashes into a crater, you aren't breaking any rules, as you aren't projecting anything at the opposing robot.
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)
>Maybe you could hijack that satelite with the giant ballon when it flys by earth tonight.
I thought the giant baloon was collecting anti-matter?
Is Cassinni the space probe powered by plutonim that is doing a sling-shot flyby the one you're maybe thingking of?
A battery of 105mm field howitzers on motorized carriages, behind entrenched infantry and APCs? A wing of AH64's, backed by assorted MBTs?
The competition was basically restricted to *very* short-range, non-mass-destruction weapons, driven by remote control. They *needed* "drivers", so the sole gain would be the lack of a human pilot actually *in* the vehicle/device.
They do fund a lot of research into mostly- or fully- autonomous vehicles, 'tho, with full-size designs 'tho.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Do you want to be the guy who has to debug a large, armed autonomous vehicle?
"I think we're OW! having a prob OW! lem with the OW! tracking system OW! again..."
I'm surprised no one has mentioned an EM Pulse.
btw, is such a thing possible? That's how they managed to get the soldiers from the Toy Soldiers movie. It was also used in one of the last few scenes in the MaTriX.
I imagine that adequate Sheilding would be crucal when you let off with this bad-boy...
Do not read this
Hmm... my first reaction was "How about jamming your opponent's RC channel?" It's not specifically forbidden... yet.
What scares me is this kind of moronic mindset. Not only are you stupid enough to believe that this has potential military application (it doesn't), you have that peculiar twisted view of the world which looks at only the surface and naively believes that the military is only about killing. In your world view, killing is bad (true), therefore the military and military research must be bad (nonsense). It was a damn good thing we had "thousands of fertile minds" working on military technology during World War II -- without them, we would have lost, and in retrospect it is absolutely clear that the consequences of the Allies losing WWII would have been the concentration camp deaths of a lot more than "just" ~6 million. Even though the public didn't know about the camps during the war, it was still clear that the Axis powers represented a grave threat to worldwide freedom. Sometimes you have to fight and kill to prevent a greater tragedy, and when you do it helps to have the best technology available. Furthermore, if anything, the trend of conventional non-nuclear military technology is that the body count goes *down* as the technology goes up, because fewer and fewer people are actually in the front lines and field medicine is improving as well. For example, World War I killed millions of soldiers in trench warfare, a style of fighting which would have been unthinkable with real aircraft and tanks around.
a dork i may be, but you should have said "fighting robots are cool"
see when you have a plural subject you need to use the plural form of the verb...
awww hell, i'm gonna get flamed.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Something to do with that #3 on your comment.
Moron.
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
"How about jamming your opponent's RC channel?"
Wouldn't be sporting, I think. Also not very interesting to watch.
Robot Wars took place up in SF from 94-97 (I think...). Some guy organized it with the help and funding of a larger corporation. Of course, once the thing got large and profitable, the large company attempted to steal the rights from the guy. He wasn't exactly pleased.
Bring in some lawyers, and Robot Wars doesn't happen in 1998. I was building a robot for the event, and was a bit annoyed.
Anyhow, now the company owns the "Robot Wars" name and "BattleBots" is a clone started by friends of the original Robot Wars guy (as the guy can't compete with Robot Wars for a certain number of years).
I went to all four sessions this year, and have a few comments...
Phew. That's my first post on /.
--
chahast at pangaea dot dhs dot org
what are you talking about?
Write all the AI code in a simulator, or whatever.
Additional costs would be negligable... some sensors, and extra processing. You could probably protect most of the "brains" from physical harm anyway....
It would be far more costly in terms of *time*, but that's just raising the bar...
That ought to short out the other guy's robot!
If U prefer smart bots, you can watch soccer games between teams of bots with real AI.
There's a world cup each year.
Check out robocup.org
http://www.cybercomm.net/~alindsey/rw97/
with pictures of all the robots, different matches and stuff. Like someone else said, fighting robots is cool .
--
Everything I know in life I learnt from
Go check out the FIRST robotics competitions. Creating a robot to destroy another is easy; creating one (in 7 weeks) to win a newly devised game every year is a challenge.
Except when cool is an adverb that modifies fighting instead of an adjective that modifies robots, i.e. "fighting is cool" or "fighting using robots is cool" in which case the singular form of the verb, is would be correct.
I'll leave it to someone else to determine who the dorks actually are.
In your interpretation, "fighting" is a gerund. Gerunds are modified by adverbs (as in "fleeing quickly"), but when used with a copulating verb ("be", "seem", etc.) take adjectives.
Of course, he probably was trying to use "fighting" as an adjectival participle to modify "robots", in which case he should've made his numbers agree.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
This show is hosted by Robert Llewellyn (yes, he of Kryten in Red Dwarf fame) and basically is a day long race between 2 teams to use anything they can find in a London scap heap to build machines to then compete against each other in a pre-set challenge.
It's actually even better than it sounds, and accessable to geeks like me, and my 4 and 6 year old kids alike - we can't get enough of this show!
You are talking about a basic autonomous robot that can move around by itself. I'm talking about something that can find the enemy robot among all the other moving objects in the arena, can defend itself against the enemy's weapon, even though it doesn't know what that weapon will be until just before the match, can deploy its own weapon at the proper timing and at the correct range, and can avoid all of the arena's traps and hazards. See the difference?
Whew, I'm glad this didn't get /.ed before the event othewrwise it would have made the webcast servers crash even more than they did.
while we are on the subject of fighting robots Our website contains details of our entrys into RobotWars UK and some links to other RW sites
An open rotary saw is exactly what one of the most destructive robots there had (Nightmare), except this is no ordinary saw its about 1/2" thick and between 2' and 3' in diameter. Took huge chunks out of the first robot it went up against, but then the organisers made the driver rotate the blade in the opposite direction so bits flung up from the saw didnt hit the crowd!
:)
There is also a very cool crushing robot called Razer, which use hydraulics to exert huge forces on other robots.
There are links to many other fighting robots from around the world on http://www.dangerousmachines.com/links/
under entrants, there's about 150 websites linked to from there.
Don't forget to look at our robot, FireStorm
Alex
There must be some rules governing what sort of weapons the robots can have right? i.e. can you send a em pulse to disable the circuitry (hopefully shielding yours)? Can you attach a submachine gun and just spray in circles? Grenades? Glue guns?
-avi
RoboWars are very cool but BBC did the same thing about a year ago - and I think they were not even the first to have a show like that on TV ! :-)
--Tim
--
Wonko the Sane
...is thinking about who might be lurking in the audience at competitions like these. Recruiters from the military looking for the next genius of mass destruction?
This sort of competition has always thrilled me with its glitzy hardware and clever ideas, but I hope we can all keep in mind the fact that the military has no scruples about funneling that sort of exuberant enthusiasm into their war programs. This competition provides them with free research and publicity - they don't have to spend a single dime to turn hundreds, perhaps thousands of fertile minds onto the old problem: How to kill.
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Gee, didn't you feel silly after hitting "Submit"
SRL has been doing this kind of stuff for years. I was fortunate to catch their Seattle show in the late 80's. Truly awesome: diesel pulse jet flame throwing carnival clown, 20 foot tall tesla coil, a robot that moved around by screwing giant auger bits horizontally against the ground...
.. is LIVE-ACTION STARCRAFT!
Wonder if having mega-units or "buildings" that churn out smaller units are allowed.
I need more time away from my computer...
In the UK we've had this kind of stuff for years - as a TV programme produced by the BBC!
This is funny... someone moderate it up please.
--
I thought the giant baloon was collecting anti-matter? :) Is antimatter against the rules?
Yep....
char *sig =
Maybe I can finally make my robot with the suicide
device... (MIT 2.670 contest organizers frowned on
that idea)
Hmmm. You're allowed to pin/hold another bot for up to 30 seconds, so if one could grab/impale (i.e. figure out how to drive a long metal spike or two -- hydraulic press? blasting cartridges? The cartridges themselves aren't being used as weapons...) through the other bot. Or, alternately, drilling instead of spiking...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
So, nobody's tried hydralic pincers yet? How about a spherical robot (driven by rotating a ballast inside the spere)? Is flying allowed? How about jumping up and down on top of the other robot? These guys have barely begun to explore the possibilities...
Case in point. Robocop, was great, 2 was a disapointment (I liked the scripted ending much better than the one they ended up using, in which the drug canister they give RC2 is actually a bomb), and I didn't bother to see RC3.
That scene in RC1 where the prototype ED209 spatters some suit was classic. Revenge of the techies.
--Mark
YOU, TOO, can get in on this exciting new field in the privacy of your own home! Download RealTimeBattle and begin programming your own software robots for battle!
:-)
There's a competition scheduled for September 11, so start writing an entry! Compete for bragging rights and proof and language advocacy!
or, maybe not... I'm writing an entry in Haskell, the ultimate language... you might as well not bother.
(just kidding)
Because these guys are insane. The winner was clad in 1/4" titanium! Like $20k? $50k? on titanium alone.
Sadly, the SFPD seem to be on SRL's mailing lists these days, so they don't get away with much any more. For the last few years, the Fire Marshall has tended to show up before the show has even gotten underway.
If you like SRL, you might also like Seemen: here's an announcement for one of their recent shows: news:344de302.1085384@news.concentric.net.
Some like-minded links are over at Laughing Squid.
In the article, it hinted that the next battlebot thing was at Comdex this Fall. I'm going to Comdex this fall, and it'd be the best thing to look forward to, really.
There's nothing telling about it at Comdex, as far as I can tell. Anyone have any info on this? Was it a crack-pipe dream? Or is it real?
A knee-high battery powered bot with a chainsaw and ~5-10 mins of battery life. (With probable mobility problems on rough ground). Let's paradrop 700 of these onto a trouble spot. Watch the enemy die of laughter.
I'm surprised no one thought of running linux on one of these bots. Wouldn't it be more robust than a WinBot(tm)? .....dithi who is too lazy to log in
other then mash :) showed a similar event..
I ran across the url once but didn't write it down.
In the detailed rules, there's a section
restricting things like EMP and shining
lasers into the eyes of your (human) opponents.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
From the micromouse, to robot table-tennis, through to robot soccer, there are plenty of robot tournaments that require the robot to have a basic AI system and be capable of making it's own decisions without outside intervention.
How can some human-operated hammer compare to aware (albeit in a limited sense) robots, capable of playing competitions under their own brainpower?
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)
If not, maybe be call them kibobot, mebobot, and gibobot. You don't wanna confuse people, right?
Offhand, it looks more like a robot popularity contest than a robitic battle to the death. Were most of the battles determined by incapacitation, or were more of the battles determined by audience vote?
It's an annual event; this show was just their latest.
"eh, weve had this in the BBC for years, this isnt news"
"I played with robots BEFORE they were cool, these are just posers"
"We did this in my preschool with blindfolds on"
SHUT UP!
fighting robots is cool.
-I go to Rice, so figure out my email address
(otherwise there would have been a lawsuit between them that was dropped later)
This was the first battlebots (of many?)
i was there
it was cool except their scheduling for the session i was was pretty inaccurate
it started at 3 and went for '4-5 hours'.
however when me and my gf left at 9:30 (to get her home by ten) it wasn't done yet
Need a Catering Connection
i remember seeing this competition years ago. Wish I could be involved with it.
The funniest bot I remember seeing was this kids doll on a big wheel. It moved around and everything..
After the announcement last week shouldn't the categories be: KibiBot, MebiBot, and GibiBot?
...just harder to make. Microcontrollers are cheap, and if they wanted to use bigger brains, they could just hook up their remote controls to their comptuters.
Ahem, as I was going to say... looking at the rules, I don't see anything prohibiting ECM. Most of the robots seem to be controlled by a hobbyist radio control type thing -- I'm suprised nobody has put a radio jammer or something in their robots -- imobilize the enemy by jamming their controller, then tear them up with an axe/rotary saw, whatever.
This competition is really cool, but the only problem is having to see your robot get destroyed after all of the work you put into it :-(. I guess the solution to that is to just win! Of course, that was Clinton's solution too and look where it got him ;-).
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
they didn't ban explosives, adhesives, cattle prods, and electrical shocks. Anyone know of a less restricted tournament?
But man, i'd love to make a few of those...
Hmm...nothing about Nuclear cremation. A few $mil in plutonium, a neutron gun, a deflective sheild and lead body suits, and voila, suddenly your the only one left (if your left, that is).
Maybe you could hijack that satelite with the giant ballon when it flys by earth tonight.
That's my 1/50 of $1.00 US
JM
Big Brother is watching, vote Libertarian!!
--Justin Mitchell
"2nd Place is a fancy word for losing" --Bender (Futurama)
Right now all the robots are remote controlled. There should be a category for autonomous AI robots. The controller would have only three buttons: attack, move, and stop. This would lead to less emphasis on big blades and harpoons and more on nimble robots that could outsmart their competition. Of course this would require considerably more expertise and more complex rules, since you could probably confuse such a robot pretty easily.
With all the rules, it looks like an open rotary saw is one of the most devistating weapons. Some sort of high powered crushing device might also be effective unless you're going after the more passive type strategies (pin the other robot or flip it over or something like that) A hammer could be nice but I bet a hydraulic press is the way to go, there are weight restrictions and hammers are effective in relation to their weight. I bet something like a bulldozer with a big beefy lawnmower engine so that it's quick and a magnetic shovel would be pretty good, bulldoze the other bots into the wall and then hold them there.. then if you could some how crush it. if only you could hold them there and then put explosives or drip liquid nitrogen on to them...
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