400 Battle Bots Fight, Toss Enemies At RoboGames Competition 58
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."
Flipbots = imba (Score:3, Informative)
ESPN....man.... (Score:3, 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 [slashdot.org]
http://www.battlebots.com/BattleBots.com/Events.html [battlebots.com]
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 [youtube.com]
I think you can figure out what kind of videos are on that channel...
*not* 400, it was 63 - I was there (Score:3, Informative)
There were only ~63 battlebots there. The other robots were mostly autonomous, and were not involved in combat.