Nearly 300 members of the public packed the St Michael’s Centre in Stoke Gifford, Bristol. They’d travelled to see an action-packed display of engineering and ingenuity at the first ever UK Robot Fighting Championships. The competition featured close to 50 pint-sized robots, no larger than 1.5 kilograms each. More than anything else, they fought tooth and nail against each other to showcase the art, creativity, and sick engineering tricks of their builders.
Craig Croucher, noted leader of the Bot Builders, was very excited and stole a moment from his busy volunteer schedule to emphasize the depth of the amazing robot-building community. Over at similarly popular UK fighting robot show Robot Wars, the robots often weighed 100-110 kg. We like to keep it relatively small and bring more folks in to our gorgeous city! As he explained, robot combat’s popular revival. Thanks to this new approach, robot fighting has reached unprecedented accessibility and appeal, attracting competitors from all over Europe.
The championship was so much fun to watch, but it created a wonderful opportunity for kids to learn. Croucher said for most of the people participating, robot fighting serves as a gateway for them to get more involved in science and technology. It’s an amazing community,” he remarked. He stressed the profound brotherhood and sisterhood between competitors who are forever stretching the limits of what their robots can do.
One of the most talked about attractions of the event was the riveting presence of an autonomous robot that showcased today’s cutting edge robotics. Croucher pointed out the cool factor of having an autonomous robot at the event. This illustrates the profound use of advanced technology present in this year’s competition.
As a show, the battles themselves were brutal, with proper bloodsport caliber robots outfitted with terror inducing weapons. Croucher then stressed that “the most destructive weapons in the universe are whirling discs. These heavy, small discs can fly at astonishing speeds, zooming far up to 250 miles per hour (402 km/h). These whirling discs unleash tremendous kinetic energy to their foes, leading to some truly dramatic moments of destruction. “They can chop them up, they can really throw them around,” Mr. Croucher continued.
Competitors spanned an impressive range of backgrounds. This diversity is representative of Croucher’s experience that “the event was filled with regular people from all professions.” This direct inclusivity sharpens the cutting-edge lure of robot fighting as competitive sport and maker culture-local development force.