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."

'bots?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Flipbots = imba

[sentientbeing]

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.

Re:The arena ceiling!?

[hairykrishna]

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.