Servo - July 2015

With the resurrection of the show BattleBots™, many of you who’ve been skipping the Combat Zone section or maybe weren’t that interested in building a bot just to have it destroyed, might be thinking about joining in. This article is meant to help ease you into the sport with some tips, clues, and warnings.

First and most important: TV shows like BattleBots and Robot Wars may have ended back in the early 2000s, but the sport didn’t die along with media coverage. In fact, there are more events worldwide than there ever were during the “glory days.” Every continent has events.

Now, this is important. The term is “combat robot.” The TV show — great as it is to have it back — doesn’t hold a monopoly on the sport. To fit in with the veterans — many of whom have been participating for 15 years — do yourself a favor and call it the right name.

Second — and nearly as important — do your homework. The absolute worst way to approach a club, builder, or FaceBook group is like this: “Hi. I want to build a BattleBot.

How do I do that?” (Ed. Note: For my own sanity, I used correct grammar, spelling, and sentence structure. Most of these posts aren’t nearly this neatly stated.)

The links included here, plus any search engine will get you to hundreds of fight videos, build reports, and articles. (Blatent Advertisement: Combat Zone has published articles on building and fighting bots for nearly 10 years. There’s an article for almost anything you can think of somewhere in your dusty stacks of old issues.)

In fact, the February issue had a specific parts list in the article “Today’s Beetle” by yours truly. The June issue had a great overview called “The Influence of Combat Robot Kits” by Nate Franklin.