A love letter to Robot Combat
I am a maker, I love making things, I always have. From the moment I found out that the dinosaurs in Jurassic park were animatronic I wanted to make robots. That blew my mind and made me want to make a robot dinosaur. From the age of about 9 (I guess) I started making little robots out of motors, gearboxes, lego and a lot of cardboard, A LOT of cardboard.
It was no surprise to anyone that knew me that upon seeing robots fighting each other I was hooked. My eyes bulged and my jaw hit the floor. I was in awe at the sight before me, which was La Machine whomping everything in sight, And the Master swinging its saw around and chopping everything up. I was all in, I went and screwed an army helmet to an RC car and strapped a drill on top and called it Drill Sergeant and I was ready to go.
That feeling from when I first saw robots fighting on VHS at my after school engineering club has never left me, I love watching robot combat. Whether it's 150g robots at an AWS or heavyweights at RoboGames I love them all, I still get that giddy feeling of awe. The sight of two machines made by two teams engaging in all out war for 3 minutes is a sight I will always be in love with.
At its core Robot Combat is an engineering challenge disguised as a robot combat event. It's your idea versus someone else's idea, it's your engineering against someone else’s engineering. It’s the fucking best!
The first event that captured my imagination was Robot Wars. I was in an afternoon school club when mentorn reached out to schools and asked them for entries for the debut season on BBC 2. I sat and watched La Machine smash the ever living shit out of everything in its path at a London live event. This set me off on a path of STEM and pitched me into the stratosphere of engineering. We missed out on the first season of Robot Wars UK because my school was a short sighted POS. We had a robot ready for the 2nd season and we loved every single second of the build and being in and around other robots. The events were huge complex machines with vast fields and some of the most impressive battles we’d seen at the time. Series 5 was my favourite. We sat and watched Bigger Brother beat Hypnodisc then the all hands on deck repair that Bigger Brother got over night to then face Razer for the title. The pits were the heart and soul of the sport then as much as it is now.
The camaraderie from Robot Wars set up the live scene, a decade plus long sportsman event series with a smattering of full combat events along the way. Roaming Robots, RoboChallenge and Robots Live kept the sport alive post Robot Wars, this period of robot combat was probably my favourite. No pressure, regular events, good friends and terrific fights. Man, fighting Terrorhurtz one weekend in Kettering was one of my best weekends. I wanted to know if I could hang with him (I couldn’t but I gave it my best) We shattered his hammer and shoved him around before losing drive on one wheel. It was a time we could experiment with new things and take our time to get them working. A lot of the things we run today are based on what we learnt back then.
My absolute favourite single event was and we likely always will be RoboGames. I had a burning desire to win a medal at RoboGames. Some of the greatest battles the sport has ever seen happened here, Sewer Snake vs Ziggo, Last Rites vs Electric Boogaloo, Megabyte vs Biohazard, Touro Maximus vs Last Rites, Original Sin vs Anyone! Oh and Raging Scotsman! THE flame bot oh man what a robot, what an event. It was always the most fun event, several people from this event came to my wedding. RoboGames may be done and gone but modern Battlebots owes its legendary robots to RoboGames without this event we wouldn't have this incredible sport where it is now.
And Battlebots, this is where I always wanted the sport to go. An almost professional level of sport with some of the best teams in the world competing at the very highest level. I love the fight night style to tournament. I am so proud to have made it to the tournament. It's a real achievement for me, one I hope to repeat this year. The fighting is intense, The pits are in tents, The showmanship is top notch, the talent is the best we’ve ever had (love you Chris and Kenny) and I’ve added even more friends to my collection of nerds from Battlebots.
For all of the stress this sport has caused me it never ever ceases to create that sense of awe and wonder. The greatest compliment you can give someone in this sport is “I love your robot! I wanna fight it!” That sums up this sport. I can sit in a bar with Ray and Justin Billings and drink and chat shit and then go fight them the next day and be outside using Ray's welder to put my robot back together.
I will happily take the stress, the heartache and failures as a form of penance for being a part of this incredible sport and its sensational community. A community built by TV shows originally, kept alive by live events and a passion for the sport, to its return to TV. Everything about this sport, the highs and lows, is incredible. I love every minute of it.