November 1st, and a large
bot event will be held on
November 6th.
Robots Live will
hold events at
Reading on November
15th, and Birmingham on November
22nd. Please go to www.robots
live.co.uk for more details. SV
EVENT REPORT
Rob t Battles 2008
● by Charles Guan — Team Test Bot
What’s the second longest-running robotic combat
competition ever? It’s neither
BattleBots nor Robot Wars. In
fact, you have probably never
even heard of it. It’s the Robot
Battles series of events, which
held its first tournament in 1991
and has been held every year
since then at the Dragon*Con
sci-fi and fantasy convention
every Labor Day weekend in
Atlanta, GA. What has kept it
going all these years is its complete
disregard for everything a
mainstream robot combat
competition holds dear.
The MC of the event is a former
radio disc jockey and newspaper
editor that occasionally makes fun
of the audience (which has a
disturbingly high proportion of
Stormtroopers). The tournament
itself is half robots and half stand-up
comedy. The atmosphere is relaxed,
and matches are often re-run just
because the builders or audience
members feel like it. The essence
of Robot Battles is that of robot
combat before the glamour of
cameras, cash prizes, and minor
pop culture icons.
There are two separate
tournaments at Robot Battles.
The main tournament
happens on Labor Day
Monday — the last day of the
convention — and is for 12
pound and 30 pound robots.
The tournament is double-elimination, and each match
is best-two-out-of-three. Leave
your high-energy kinetic
The 12 pound battle
royale at Robot
Battles 2008.
Robot Battles, the longest-running indie
robot fighting event.
weapons at home, because the
fights are open-air on a raised
stage, sumo style. That means good
driving far outweighs your weapon
choice, and a fair percentage of
matches are actually decided when
one robot simply careens off the
stage. Robot MicroBattles, which
began in 2003, caters to the
smallest combat classes: the one-pounders and three-pounders. This
tournament is enclosed-arena and
with the full set of Robot Fighting
League-approved weaponry allowed.
The level of destruction and energy
is much higher. The audience loves
shredded parts, flying sparks, and
especially when one robot runs
head-on into the floor hazard (a
grinder-powered spinning rubber
wheel with gratuitous protrusions)
and is subsequently sprayed across
the arena.
For the 2008 event, 29 little
‘bots fought at MicroBattles and 20
large robots competed at the main
tournament. The record number
of small ‘bots necessitated running
the tournament single-elimination,
instead of the usual double in order
to fit the event within its given time
slot. The audience packed both
events to standing-room-only levels,
and the convention twice closed the
large ballroom in which the main
tournament was held because the
Thirty pound robots Jaws (right) and Vorpal
Bunny Foo-Foo (left) ensnare their weapons.
Überclocker (left) and
Poulan Rouge (right) tangle in
the 30 pound elimination rounds.
SERVO 11.2008 31
