Servo - April 2012

combat learned of this pint sized version of the sport.

In the late 1990s, the UK was experimenting with a variety of Insect weight classes. They eventually settled on the 150 gram “UK Antweight” (in the United States, known as a Fairyweight). United States builders learned of this weight class while competing abroad at the Robot Wars UK competition and on the popular Delphi Forum. A discussion soon began among US builders to adopt a version of the Antweight at home. Andrew Lindsey, one of the founders of NERC (North East Robotics Club) and Delphi Forum frequenter, recalls that “the idea of Antweight bots started with the UK competitors, but there it seemed to be a challenge of how to make the smallest possible robots rather than a low-budget entry class. They were using micro servos and receivers, and trying to figure out what the smallest weight was that still allowed Because of the differing priorities of the United States builders, they adapted the UK Antweight to an even 1 lb weight class, and the Antweight was (basically) born.

Mystery arena photograph of BattleAnts bots.

Antweight TadPole at CJRC ’01 and iHXRC ’01 (International Hobby and Model Expo) in Chicago. Dr. Maudlin documents these long forgotten events at www.lazytoad.com/ teamtoad/ events.html.

Simultaneously, Sozbots was forming in southern California. Sozbots — which gets its name from an abbreviation of the term “ 16 oz bots” — held its first event February 21, 2002, according to cofounder Eric Stoliker. Stoliker, along with Patrick Campbell, Brian Roe, and later Peter Abrahamson went on to run many successful Sozbots events.

They also ran an extremely popular Insect parts store online. The Sozbots electronic speed controller is arguably the quintessential Insect component, and became wildly popular among Insect builders in the mid-2000s.

Then — either by coincidence or an act of fate — BattleAnts was held as a demonstration at BattleBots 5.0 in May 2002. It was held outside of the venue for the larger BattleBots, and was an invitation only event for 16 builders. The specifics of this event are a little hazy; the brackets, for example, are nowhere to be found. By one account, the BattleAnts competition used the WAR arena and was hosted by SECR DeVits, as well as SECR founding member Chris Williamson, were key players in organizing the BattleAnts event. Williamson, like the Sozbots founders, also founded a successful online parts store called AntBotics.com which was later sold to the Robot MarketPlace. According to many sources (including a 2004 SERVO article), the founding members of Sozbots first came into contact with the Antweight class at this event.