Robot Combat Wiki



What is Robot Combat?
Robot combat is the sport/hobby (referred to as a 'spobby' by participants) of constructing a machine (usually radio-controlled) in order to damage, incapacitate (immobilise), pin or ring-out (OOTA) an opponent. In some competitions, robots may also be driven around an obstacle course.

A Brief History
Robot combat was invented in the early 1990s when he attempted to add a radio control aspect to some of his house-hold appliances. When the robots didn't respond as they were supposed to, Marc attached chainsaws to them and having them destroy each other. Marc organised an untelevised event in San Francisco and encouraged participants to build their own machines. Four of these events, the original Robot Wars, were held annually.

Tom Gutteridge, head of the TV production company Mentorn, was shown amateur tapes of the competitions and decided that the competitions would make a good television show. He employed Steve Carsey to help him develop the show, which would retain the name Robot Wars. They caught the attention of the BBC and a series of meeting were held in 1995 to decide who would be responsible for what and other similar administrative things. A pilot was made using some tried-and-tested American and some UK-built robots. Filming of the first series took place in November, 1997 and the show finally aired for the first time in 1998.

A year later, American competitors in the original Robot Wars set up a new competition called BattleBots. The first competition was held in Long Beach, CA and was shown as a cybercast. The second was held in Las Vegas later the same year and was available for Pay-Per-View. In 2000, Comedy Central began producing televised shows of 5 competitions until 2002.

The first Robotica competition took place in March 2001, with the third and last some time in early 2002.

The Robot Fighting League (RFL), a governing body operating in Canada, USA, Brazil and Australia, was set up in November 2002 after a set of discussions between event organisers who believed a standardised rule set was needed.

In 2003, with robot combat increasing in popularity and dangerous street battles becoming more common, the Fighting Robot Association (FRA) was set up to govern rule sets and provide a platform for organising events.

Today, robot combat competitions are held across the globe, from USA to India, from Malta to Australia, from UK to Brazil. Whilst events are no longer televised, the number of robot combat competitors is always rising and the spobby is becoming increasingly popular.

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