So, after we did our little robot shindig on television a while back, we caught the attention of all kinds of people – rabid robot loving kids, Concerned Mothers, our insurance company (“Ma’am, this is *not* a competitive table setting competition.”) – and among the hordes emerged this article.

This is a written, blow by blow accounting and evisceration of the Killer Robots show. It’s brutal. It’s bitchy. It’s sarcastic and it probably could have used one or two things like “fact checking” and “research” and “getting off the couch once in a while”.

This of course means that it’s one of the funniest things we have ever read, hands down, whether it’s about us or not.

Perhaps the biggest letdown of this whole event is the fact that the difference between this arena and a Wal-Mart parking lot is the placement of the lines painted on the floor (and the lack of dirty diapers in the arena). What happened to the Pulverizers? What happened to the Spike Strip? Hell, there’s not even the famed Kill Saws! And really “Kill Saw” probably has a trademark on it but I mean the RoboGames people couldn’t come up with a second-best knock-off like “Discs of Inconvenience” or something?

We’re actually going ‘Disc Of Inconvenience” shopping right now.

I will say that my shiftless largely humor-free reprobate misanthrope of a partner, Mister Robotics, spent last night laughing out loud for well over an hour. This has not happened in about two years.

From the start of the show, after the weird opening montage of people screaming at robots and cowering in fear and shock, Grant Imahara introduces us all to the sport in an incredibly brief run-down that demonstrates that virtually nothing has changed in the sport since the days of BattleBots. Well, except for the addition of flamethrowers. And Grant’s teeth. Okay, maybe that was rude of me but seriously if you Google “grant imahara” one of the suggested searches is “grant imahara’s teeth”. Don’t blame me for being a racist douchebag, blame Google.

So Go here and Read This, laugh your ass off, and then tell him to call us. Seriously.

*An Addendum: I’ll have you know we do *not* play bingo in the arena, sir. It’s Keno the old folks are into. Sheesh.

So! We decided to pool all our nickels and throw together a little robot shindig next weekend. We’re bringing in all our good friends and dedicated crew folks, and we will make a concerted effort to

[metal voice]
MAKE SURE THE FINEST ROBOT COMBAT ENGINEERING MARVELS IN THE COUNTRY SHRED EACH OTHER INSIDE THE ARENA FOR TWO. SOLID. DAYS.
[/metalvoice]

You knew it was coming, we’re gluttons for punishment, it’s

The Sixth Annual ComBots Cup
October 29-30th 2011
At the lovely San Mateo County Expo Center
in Beautiful San Mateo, California
2pm-7pm
Adults: $25 at the door or $20 in advance.
Children 7-17: $20 at the door or $15 in advance.
Children 0-6: free. (Warning: it’s very loud.)
BUY TICKETS HERE!

Dozens of robots makers from all over the globe have cast common sense to the wind and scattered the contents of their bank accounts in sacrifice to The Robot Gods in order to bring you one amazing weekend of total mechanical ridiculousness in the form of ear-searing, heart-stopping, insurance-adjuster-apoplexy-causing Robot Combat!

See the champions from Brazil, Team RioBotz, make their maiden Combots Cup voyage against the likes of Last Rights, Sewer Snake, Original Sin, Vlad the Impaler II and The Ragin’ Scotsman!

Here’s a complete list of all the heavyweight contenders, their stats, their photos, and bios! Get your learn on, kids, there’s going to be a quiz later!

Smell the all-too familiar and strikingly addictive Robot Combat Smell – a touch of burnt metal, the fizz of exploded battery packs, and the wrenching feotor of broken dreams!

Get your tickets in advance, the stands are always crowded!

Super special guest: Jason Dante Bardis, putting his scary R/C moves on Vlad The Impaler II! You saw him on TV, you marveled at his skill with Dr. Inferno Junior, now see him go All. The. Way with 220lbs of shrieking steel, built by a madman and hewn from the very depths of Robot Hell itself!

Seriously. Robot Hell. We’ve seen it.

So! Come on down, grab a beer, and settle in to watch five hours of hot robot on robot action EACH DAY, Saturday and Sunday October 29-30th. It will be Epic.

The latest issues of Robot is out! Eveyrone go snag a copy at one of your fine local publications depots.

We make special note of this, because while Robot is indeed a fine, fine publication, Our Man In Japan Lem Fugitt has a really nice cover article about a neat sounding little event called RoboGames which apparently happened in the Silicon Valley this past April.

We love Lem, because not only does he have an exhaustively informative fire hose of robot information over on his blog (which blog we here would very much like to be when we grow up), but he also is a dandy fine person and we always look forward to plying him with alcohol and questionable conduct when he is here on his annual US spring sojourn.

Plus he’s got awesome footage of me giving Team RioBots what for after an incident in the arena (Naughty Brazilians!).

We also welcome with open arms the possibility that more of our friends from Robot Japan and the greater Tokyo Area will come show the US competitors how it’s done for RoboGames 2012!

So go out and get a Robot right now and support printed matter.

Fighting an autocratic regime? Have a few things lying around in your machine shop? Why not create a rebel war robot to kill time while you fight vociferously for your cause? The whole world is watching!

All kidding aside, this piece from Al-Jazeera English shows rebel engineers building, among other things, armed power wheels, an ROV ammo resupply machine, and your basic shoulder mounted rocket launcher.

Notable quotes from ass-kicking Libyan engineering students:

“We want to use our weapons in a systematic way against those who take up arms against us. We hope they will not use their arms against civilians.”

“It’s strange going from being an engineering students to designing weapons, but we’ve seen many bad things in this war and I have to help the fighters and my people any way I can.”

“We don’t carry guns but we want to help save our people, budding ways which reduce loss of life, even against Gaddafi’s forces. Because we are against killing unless there is no choice, we don’t want to be like him and kill everyone.”

DIY shit just got real.

[Thanks Singularity Hub!]

As promised, we have news on the RoboGames 2011 TV special!
The show premieres on May 30th, 9PM on the SCIENCE channel!

Discovery Press has also published an excellent article going over the television show – Read Me!

Lastly, the awesome commercial, in all its robotty splendor:

(Thank you Robot Marketplace for the Youtube vid)

-The Intern

The sound of hundreds of pounds of metal slamming into each other, and the smell of burning rubber and fried electronics finally fades.
It’s been three weeks since the annual International RoboGames took place, and I think my hearing is finally back.

This year’s annual RoboGames was a huge success, and we’d like to thank everyone for coming down to the San Mateo Event Center and hope to see you again in October for The ComBots Cup!

For those not familiar, RoboGames is the world’s largest robotics competition! The 3-day extravaganza featured 239 teams from 17 countries competing in 59 separate events; including soccer, hockey, sumo, fire-fighting, kung-fu, and the ever popular (and dangerous) combat robots!

I’d like to send out a special thanks to the crazy Brazilian teams that showed up, as well as the Japanese teams that made the long trek out despite the obvious complications at home.

As an added bonus we were joined by Grant Imahara (of Mythbusters fame) and The Science Channel. They were filming a TV special that is set to air on Memorial Day Weekend, more news as we get it!

For those that want to check out what they missed (or relive what they saw), YouTube is overflowing with RoboGames videos:

Make sure to check out the combat, as well as humanoid events!

(Credit to Lem Fugitt and robots-dreams.com for the footage)

Lastly, a quick thank-you to our sponsors:

Google, Jameco, TechShop, The Robot MarketPlace, Neato Robotics, Willow Garage, Servo Magazine, Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, Innovati, Robots-Dreams and FingerTech Robotics!

Check out more RoboGames coverage!
Jameco RoboGames Update
Wired RoboGames Coverage
IEEE – Humanoids at RoboGames
nerdsinbabeland.com

-The Intern

Kal Spelletich, Robot Artist extraordinaire, does things with machines that should be marginally illegal, and probably are. He is having a show this Saturday in San Francisco, which you should go to if you are geographically situated.

The Australian contingent of the Robot Fighting League recently had an event Down Under, and forwarded us videos to prove it.

In their words: “All our fights were broadcast live on the internet, but we forgot to let you guys know. Sorry.”

They will be dealt with summarily. Before that, here are some nice boomysmashy videos to get your mid-whatever-season-it-is-in-your-hemisphere blues all fired up and filled with robotty goodness:

See also an MP4 here with BOTCAM! Action (takes a bit to load) and another one here (also takes a bit to load that features BOTCAM! Action from an opposing angle.

In the first video there is what he Aussie call a LiPoly Fire. I would just like to say (omgomgomg I actually get to say this omg whee):

THAT’S not a LiPoly fire.

THIS is a Lipoly Fire!:

The action begins about 40 seconds in.

Thanks Aussie RFL participant Kkeerroo and Matt Maxham of Team Plumb Crazy for the ComBots Cup V video

Hey there campers, we’re (as in, the royal we, as in, me) getting set to decamp to NYC, where MakerFaire NYC is calling all her tired DIYers, poor robot builders and humbled masses yearning to soak up all the cool projects people from all over the country are bringing to show off.

Among these cool projects is Bar2D2, the cocktail robot juggernaut, about which we have written in these hallowed pages before.

Jamie Price, the mad genius who figured Bar2D2 out, has a neat new Instructable that you should all read. Then, go make one of your own!

Incidentally, I am giving a talk about robots and various and sundry things Saturday and Sunday at Makerfaire NYC, on the Make Demo stage. Come by and say hi!

Welcome Robot Fighting League member Guerra De Robots, a confederation between IEEE, IEEE Mexico, and UPIITA

Their motto is “Luchando por nuestra identidad tecnológica”, or “Fighting for our technical identity.

We expect great things of them in the coming months, mostly involving solving highly refined technical problems in order to bash the living hell out of the other robot in the arena. ¡Que tenga buena suerte, todos!

COMBOTS CUP V

Yes, it’s

COMBOTS CUP V
October 23-24th, 2010 at the beautiful San Mateo Expo Center in beautiful San Mateo, Ca. Tickets are on sale now at Combots.net!

COMBOTS CUP V is so stupendous I am contractually obligated to spell it in all caps.

COMBOTS CUP V is robot combat at its best, with competition from the tiniest 1-pound ant weights to 220lb heavyweights (which are on the biggish side).

Thank You Mad Overlord for the hi-def videos from RoboGames 2010, whoo.

See the thrill of victory, and the smoke and flames of defeat! See small children getting into hard core mechanical engineering and software programming! See who wins some of our $3500 prize purse, and who goes home in a bucket.