The author
driving Babe The
Blue Bot at the
2003 "The Capital
Offense" event in
Tallahassee, FL.
(recall Combat Zone editor Kevin
Berry’s massive flop at Robocide in
2003, also discussed last month).
Enter the Insect weight classes. The
most popular Insect classes are
Antweight (up to one pound) and
Beetleweight (up to three pounds).
In addition to these are the 150
gram Fairyweight and the six pound
Mantisweight. These scaled back
bots were much less expensive and
somewhat safer to build (although I
will again remind you: All robot
building is dangerous! And, while
The 16 invited bots at the BattleAnts
competition.
the blade on an
Antweight might
not take off your
hand, it could
easily take one
of your fingers,
Before I get into the history of
the Antweight, I’d like to share my
personal experience with the class.
It was around this same time period
that I was introduced to robot
combat. My first event was at the
SECR-sponsored The Capital Offense
in July ‘03. I was nine years old, and
shared an Antweight wedge called
Babe the Blue Bot (a play off of Paul
The author and the
rest of Legendary
Robotics around the
Insect arena at TCO.
Bunyan’s companion Babe the Blue
Ox) with my seven year old brother.
I lost in the semifinals to Cuzin It,
driven by Ross Embry from
TeamPyramid, due to mechanical
failures by Babe.
In the true spirit of the sport
(and maybe because he just felt bad
about beating a team of small
children), Ross offered a friendly
rematch to me, and I walked away
with the pride of knowing I could
have won the semifinal match if not
for the mechanical troubles.
I was pretty regularly involved in
the SECR matches in Florida from
that point on, and in that time I
discovered that the true kindness
extended to me by Ross was not
unique; it was simply how the
builders treated each other. I also
learned that, even as a little girl, I
could hold my own against much
older competitors (although, looking
back on it, they may have been
reluctant to aggressively compete
against a 10 year old girl), and won
my fair share of matches. My
experience with robot combat was
one of the most fun, exciting, and
enlightening that I have ever had,
and I look back on it with great
fondness.
Readers who have been
following this series might
remember the importance of
Denver’s Critter Crunch in the
establishment of the sport. In
addition to this, Critter Crunch can
also claim a critical role in
developing the Insect class.
Although Critter Crunch — the
mother of all robot combat
competitions at MileHiCon in
Denver, originally in 1987 — had no
specified weight classes, the
competition soon adopted two
weight divisions: 20 lb and 2 lb. The
2 lb weight class at Critter Crunch
was probably the earliest version of
the Insect weight class.
Although Critter Crunch has
used this Insect-esque weight class
for years, the rest of the nation was
slow to catch up. It would take
many years before the rest of robot
36 SERVO 04.2012
