EVENTS
Completed and Upcoming Events
Completed Events for
April 13 to May 17,
2009
Kilobots XIII
was held
on May 16th in
Saskatoon,
Canada
BOTSIQ 2009 National
Competition, BattleBots 2009
High School Championship,
Collegiate Championship, and Pro
Championships were held in Vallejo,
CA on April 21st.
HORD Spring
2009 was
held on May 9th
in Brecksville, OH.
Seattle Bot Battle 7 was held on
April 12th in, of course, Seattle.
Upcoming Events for
Jul-Aug 2009
Gulf Coast Robot Sports- 2 will
be held in Bradenton, FL on
July 11th.
PA Bot Blast 2009 will be held
in Bloosmburg, PA on July
18th. SV
EVENT REP RT:
Ideas Festival, Australia
● by Nick Martin
The Ideas Festival is a
government sponsored “future
thinking” event held in Brisbane,
Australia every three years. The last
two events have included a national
featherweight robot combat
competition organized by the local
bot builders. We get the luxury of a
large auditorium with seating for
several thousand spectators, a giant
overhead video screen, production
staff, and an enthusiastic audience.
Day 1
The three day event started on
Friday with check-in and safety
PHOTO 1. The arena and auditorium.
inspection. All 22 bots made it
through weight and safety, though
some were very close on the
weight. The competition format was
a modified round robin rather than
a double elimination so that it could
be stretched out to three days. This
meant every bot was drawn in every
round until it either died or made it
to the finals which were
single elimination between
the top eight bots.
My own bot
(Scissorhands) started off
abysmally with a receiver
failure only a few seconds
into its first fight. Other
matches were far more
exciting, with a nail biting
confrontation between
PyroBot and Sproing, an
PHOTO 2. Sproing vs. PyroBot.
28 SERVO 07.2009