Robot Combat History
From Combat Robot
The founder of robot combat is considered to be Mark Thorpe.* He was the driving force behind the first recognized robot combat event, the 1994 US Robot Wars event in San Francisco. The Critter Crunch event actually pre-dates Robot Wars by more than a decade, but nothing much developed from their quirky rules.
The partnership that ran the US Robot Wars broke apart in 1997 and began an ugly and protracted legal battle. One partner claimed the trademark and moved the tournament (with significant changes) to England to begin the televised UK Robot Wars. Robot Wars ran on UK television from 1997 thru 2003.
Following the departure of Robot Wars, a group of enthusiasts in the San Francisco area founded the Battlebots tournaments. Their first competition took place at Long Beach, California in 1999. Their second event (Las Vegas, 1999) was televised as a cable Pay-Per-View event. The Comedy Central cable network (an odd match for robot combat) televised selected matches of the next five semi-annual tournaments as a weekly series from 2000 to 2002.
In 2001, an independent production company developed a television show similar to the earliest seasons of the UK Robot Wars with a variety of skill challenges that lead up to a robot sumo style final combat round. The TLC cable network televised three seasons of Robotica from 2001 to 2002.
The UK Robot Wars had become popular in a number of world-wide markets and had begun to film country-specific tournaments for broadcast abroad. The TNN cable network worked with UK Robot Wars to televise two seasons of Robot Wars Extreme Warriors in the U.S in 2001 and 2002. The tournaments were filmed in the UK with US competitors.
By late 2002 there were a large number of regional events in the U.S. catering to a wide range of weight classes and each with their own rule sets. In November of that year, a number of event organizers created the Robot Fighting League with the intention of standardizing rule sets and supporting robot combat in general.
In the U.K., two groups moved in to fill the void left by the collapse of UK Robot Wars -- the Fighting Robot Association and Roaming Robots. Both groups are active and together put on several events each year.
Several robot combat competitions have sprung up that feature events beyond simple combat. In the US, BotBash has tried a variety of interesting formats. In the UK, 8ack is a team oriented combat game that is gaining in popularity.
A full documentation of the turbulent early history of robot combat may be found in the book Gearheads, by Brad Stone.
The short version, 1992 - 2002, as compiled by Jim Smentowski at Robotcombat.com.
Mark Thorpe discusses the early days on his site
- Any discussion of robot combat that doesn't mention Survival Research Laboratories [1] is quite incomplete. SRL's originators are arguably the true founders of robot combat, though not in the vein of a competition.
See also: Robot combat, US Robot Wars, UK Robot Wars, Battlebots, Robotica, 8ack
