Demise of the Battle Bots

[ccwaterback]

Wasn't Battle Bots a hot TV show a couple years ago? I never see them anymore. What happened?

[friedo]

It got cancelled.

I loved Battle Bots. :(

[stuyguy]

Reminds me of something I posted once before:

Related story here:

My white-haired old mother, whose TV watching habits are not what you'd call cutting edge, took a fancy to watching Weakest Link every night. WL, you will recall, was white-hot popular not too long ago. Its host, Ann Robinson, became an overnight star.

Well, much to my mom's disappointment, about two weeks ago WL was no longer in its usual time slot and she could not find it anymore. Don't fret, I told her, I'll do a web search to see where it's gone.

Well, WL has been banished to the 2:00 a.m. slot! How the mighty have fallen.

[mks57]

I remember reading stories about some legal conflicts over who owned the rights to the name and concept of battle bots, both here and in the UK. Plus, I think there were conflicts between the participants and organizers in the USA.

I liked the show, although I wish they had an unlimited class where there were no rules on weapons.

[tim314]

Are Battle Bots competitions still taking place, but without the show? Or were the competitions dependent on funding from the T.V. network?

[Colophon]

Is that like the show we had in the UK called Robot Wars? Nerdy types who'd spent months building sophisticated remote control robots watching in horror as the remote control jammed and their helpless creations were pounded flat in seconds by the "house robots"?

That was fun. Cruel, but fun.

[Small Clanger]

It looks like Robot Wars is no more (http://www.five.tv/home/frameset/?content=4465691) (go to the "news" tab). First abandoned(?) by the BBC and moved to Channel 5 and now dumped. I think it ran out of steam with the robots getting more generic (spinners, wedges, flippers. . .) and the show getting very samey. I'm guessing the same thing happened to the US version.

. . . I wish they had an unlimited class where there were no rules on weapons.Guns, missiles, nukes?

[mks57]

Guns, missiles, nukes?

I was thinking of shaped charges, projectile weapons, incendiary devices, electromagnetic pulse generators, corrosive chemicals, and bunkers for the judges and audience :).

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

I was thinking of shaped charges, projectile weapons, incendiary devices, electromagnetic pulse generators, corrosive chemicals, and bunkers for the judges and audience :).
Add arc welder weapons.

[Bernard Marx]

I saw one episode of Robot Wars (that was the one that was presented by "Lister" wasn't it?). At first I thought that the robots were fully autonomous killing machines and I was v. impressed; this soon turned to disappointment when I saw that they were actually remotely controlled

[dec]

Money is what killed the whole thing. I attended the original Robot Wars in San Francisco (don't know if the British thing came first). There was no television coverage and first prize was something like $500. Many of the entries were from small children. People in the pits shared tools and duct tape. It was a damn good time for all involved.

Then came TV and money and disputes over who 'owned' it and who owned the name. Name change, more TV, more infighting, another name change blah blah.

Now that the money is gone, maybe they can hold it in a parking lot somewhere, break out the duct tape and have some good fun again. If they do, I'm there.

[Trigonal Planar]

I hate to be a spoil sport but I hated the show. Love the idea, but hated the show. The robots the people submitted were crap. I'm not saying that they didn't take a lot of work (and money), but a show called Battle Bots (or Robot Wars) that declares a winner based on which remote control lasts the longest is really a let down.

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

Why does this thread title remind me of the death of Optimus Prime in Transformers: The Motion Picture ?

[Papermache Prince]

If you want autonomous robots, there's still MIT and the Autonomous Robot Competition (http://web.mit.edu/6.270/). If you're in the Boston area, swing on by.

Seeding Rounds
Sunday, January 23, 2005, 10:00am, Kresge Main (http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg?selection=W16)
The first two rounds of the contest.

Elimination Rounds
Wednesday, January 26, 2005, 10:00am, Kresge Main
The first two elimination rounds of the contest.

Final Rounds
Wednesday, January 26, 2005, 6:00pm, Kresge Main
The final rounds of the contest. Robots will compete until a winner is decided. This event will be televised live on MIT Cable.

No flame throwers allowed.

[ccwaterback]

So it looks like the Battle Bots were defeated by the TV Lawyer Bots.

The Battle Bots are still battling though:

http://www.battlebots.com/meet_the_robots3/meet_results.asp?search=1&weight_class=all&search_string=&season4=1&season3=1&season2=1&season1=1&lv99=1&lb99=1&sort_by=bot_name&submit.x=31&submit.y=3

[RevCo]

It looks like Robot Wars is no more (http://www.five.tv/home/frameset/?content=4465691) (go to the "news" tab). First abandoned(?) by the BBC and moved to Channel 5 and now dumped. I think it ran out of steam with the robots getting more generic (spinners, wedges, flippers. . .) and the show getting very samey. I'm guessing the same thing happened to the US version.

Yeah - the thing that killed that show for me was the lack of variation - the whole "playfield*" never changed, so what worked for one robot worked for another. Also, there was not enough encouragement for improvisation and creativity. Seemed safe to have a plain, boring, flat robot thing or something winning every time.

I recall that the ones that tried to be creative were ripped on by the guest/host when they eventually lost. That always pissed me off (but I get Battle Bots and Robot Wars confused.)

Regarding fighting robots: I would have prefered to see a robot with a flamethrower or M-80's firing, but that's just me. Hell - they could have made the zone bulletproof, long term remote controls with no audience, put .22's on the things and let 'em have at it.


* I didn't see close to every episode.

[CJJ*]

IMHO, the Battle Bots fad burned out for the same reason most fads do: It quickly became both repetitious and boring. BattleBots distilled the competiton of the earlier "Robot Wars"--which included obstacle courses and some non-combat elements--into a series of repetitive 1-minute fights surrounded by 20 minutes of blathering commentary.

As someone mentioned, most battles were inevitably decided by whose remote control lasted the longest. And as for the battles themselves, the blowouts were always the most spectacular and so most eye-catching, though by definition they didn't last very long (I still remember one robot being tossed the length of the field in the first five seconds by his opponents saw). Even then, it was rare to see an opponent substantially damaged (the 'bot would usually just stop moving), much less utterly destroyed--c'mon, why else have a saw or flamethrower unless a robot can be split in two or incinerated? The longer fights were usually an exercise in defensiveness, until time mercifully expired and the match was decided by that bane of interesting competition, the judges (for this reason alone, that the result is determined solely by subjective judges, I do not consider such athletic events as figure skating or gymnastics to be sports).

[blowero]

Gotta agree with RevCo. There was no incentive for people to build interesting robots. The show ended up with almost all the robots being those stupid flat wedge thingies. The wedges are really hard to damage because they have such a low profile, but they're boring as hell. I remember one guy built this really cool giant spider kind of thing, but it got clobbered pretty quickly. And a lot of the contestants were basically building ram-rods. No weapons - all they can do is crash into the other robot. That gets old after awhile.

Oh, and the commentators were borderline retarded.

[Rex Fenestrarum]

And yet, Trading Spaces is still on. Truly there's no justice in this world.

Rex
who watched three episodes of Battle Bots and got bored with it.

[ccwaterback]

Oh, and the commentators were borderline retarded.

Probably true, but you have to admit Mick Foley is one crazy dude. :)

[Max Torque]

I remember one guy built this really cool giant spider kind of thing, but it got clobbered pretty quickly.
That was probably Mechadon (http://homepage.mac.com/roninsfx/Team_Sinister/iMovieTheater16.html), and it was a very pretty robot. Especially when it did its "death blossom" maneuver. But, it isn't an effective fighter, at all.

I'll wager someone could have shaken up the competition with a good "wedge killer". My own idea was a bot that would climb on top of the stupid wedges on purpose, then hammer down with a jackhammer or like weapon from within the center of the bot. I never saw another bot with a weapon designed to fire downward, so who knows, it might've worked.

[Max Torque]

I remember one guy built this really cool giant spider kind of thing, but it got clobbered pretty quickly.
That was probably Mechadon (http://homepage.mac.com/roninsfx/Team_Sinister/iMovieTheater16.html), and it was a very pretty robot. Especially when it did its "death blossom" maneuver. But, it isn't an effective fighter, at all.

I'll wager someone could have shaken up the competition with a good "wedge killer". My own idea was a bot that would climb on top of the stupid wedges on purpose, then hammer down with a jackhammer or like weapon from within the center of the bot. I never saw another bot with a weapon designed to fire downward, so who knows, it might've worked.

[mobo85]

And yet, Trading Spaces is still on. Truly there's no justice in this world.

Hmm, there's an idea for a show. Making over a house while fighting robots. I wonder if Paige Davis would win in a fight against Ziggo?

[AndrewL]

BattleBots was cancelled largely because it was an incredibly expensive show to produce. Robot Wars ran longer, but was killed by failing ratings in the end.

Robot combat competitions are still going on around the country (and were, in fact, going on before the breif fad of televised events). Although most of them involve weight classes a lot smaller than what BattleBots went up to - it costs a lot to build and maintain an arena capable of safely containing 300+ pound fighting robots.

You can see a list of some of the upcoming events at http://www.buildersdb.com/

There are, on average, about two events held a month around the country - although most of them are for 12 pound or smaller weight classes. ROBOlympics seems to be the closest thing to what BattleBots was that's currently running - comparable arena, all the same weight classes and quite a bit more as well, run once a year in San Francisco.