I didn’t see a thread on this. SyFy has a new tv show,Robot Combat Challenge. As the title suggests, the show pits two anthropomorphic robots against each other in a punching fight, somewhat similar to the movie Real Steel.
I watched the first episode the other night. They gave intros to the competitors, and gave a rundown on the set up for the show, then had the first skills test that set the pairings for the tournament. Finally, they showed the first match.
The teams are pairs of people, one serves as the tech lead - robot driver (via game console joystick kind of controls) and tech lead, and the second is the robot jockey (wears a harness and drives the arms and upper body motion via direct physical input).
First thing that struck me is the setup is somewhat weak. The teams are individuals who we don’t know how they were selected, but they were paired up by the show. Furthermore, the robots were all designed by one lead engineer, who designed a common system (the rack for support and motion, the basic operational design) and then individualized 12 different robots (armor, structural tweaks, range of motion, and size, appearance). The robots were then assigned to the teams, the teams did not select their teammates nor did they select the robot or control any of the differences in the features of their robot.
Out of the cast of 24, some pairings that caught my attention:
One team has George Lucas’s daughter, who is an MMA fighter, paired up with another chick.
Another competitor is a male MMA fighter. Another was a 2-time Olympic hurdler. Another is a soldier and helicopter pilot.
Then there’s the father/daughter pair of geeky engineers who build robots, who also apparently had bouts of serious illness at the same time - she had kidney troubles, he had cancer. Um, yeah. They were the only ones who knew each other before the pairings.
The teams were then given a training session to learn how to operate their robots, using the training sparring generic robots.
The first task was a timed trial to hit a target on one sparring bot using another sparring bot, not their “own” robot. Kind of shake out the cobwebs, get used to moving and reacting without being punched at.
The results from the timed trial seeded the tournament, where the fastest time was paired against the slowest time for the first challenge.
The fastest time went to the olympic hurdler and his partner, the slowest time was the father/daughter team geek family. The one team was given a blue robot with a canister body described as having moderate body armor, heavier, and longer reach. The father/daughter team had a robot with chromoly steel frame armor that apparently had sheets of plexiglas or lexan as the armor plating.
They got a practice session where they practiced moving around, and the blue team broke their own robot just bouncing around. One of the actuators on the legs broke and spilled hydraulic fluid around.
Okay, time for the match. First round was dominated by the blue team. They were moving better and scoring lots of big hits, team geek family couldn’t coordinate their movements, dad was a lousy driver, and the tiny girl trying to punch in the harness had never done anything like that before, and wasn’t really getting any hits. The blue team managed to bust the armor off one shoulder of the other robot and break one of the arm actuators before the round ended. They then had 20 minutes to try to repair their robot or face a TKO.
They replaced the actuator and just managed to get the armor back on. Time for round 2. Round 2 was a bit different.
The blue team started out well and were getting in good hits, but then managed to break their own arm actuator hitting the other robot. Then the other robot started getting in some good shots, especially to the body, before finally breaking their own arm.
That’s right, the most damage was caused to their own robots trying to hit their opponents.
The blue team ended up losing by TKO, because of all the hits, so team geek family actually won.
Okay, I’ll watch again to see how it goes, the combat is somewhat fun, but the lack of contribution by the teams to their robot design or selection hampers the fun for me. The robots have individual strengths and weaknesses, but we don’t have any real way to judge what we’re told, and the teams had no input to selection of those factors, so they just have to deal with what they have.
The design seems to be so that the robots are armored, but not so strong that they can’t fracture.
And we now know where Star Trek came up with their exploding consoles. These robots have a tendency to throw up big cascades of sparks from their torsos.
Anybody else watch this?