I thought I'd use this opportunity to brag about my dad. He just turned 68 yesterday.

First, a little backstory: My dad has been building and competing with combat robots for quite a few years now. He started with a middleweight 'bot named "Maggot" that he competed in Battlebots tournaments with. However, he found out that, by entering a 'bot in a Battlebots match, Battlebots winds up owning the imaging rights, name, etc. of that bot - essentially, you get to keep the 'bot but you can't use it for anything else except for Battlebots tournaments - the restrictions that were placed on the use of the 'bot were pretty tight.

Dad decided he had enough of Battlebots so, he stripped "Maggot" down and built a whole new 'bot that he competed with in smaller Battlebots-style arenas - he named this 'bot "Botfly" (He had a thing for insect-themed names lol...)

There aren't any images of "Maggot" - Battlebots owned the rights so dad had to take the images off his website. Here's a pic of "Botfly" - sorry, it's not a very good one, but it's the only one I could find.



Fast-Forward to present day: Somewhere along the line, he found out about RoboGames and Mech Warfare. He decided to give this a go.

Following are some videos showing some RoboGames/Mech Warfare matches. My dad's 'bot is the one name "Bheka" - it's black and, in some of these vids, it's shown with what appears to be a missile battery mounted above the turret and skulls on the legs:

First is a video that helps explains what these matches are and how the 'bot operators participate: ("Bheka" is in this vid- it doesn't have the skulls on the legs but, at one point, it does spin around and square-off against "Giger".

RoboGames 2010: Mech Warfare - YouTube

These next two show the combat action - "Bheka" appears in both of these:

Mech Warfare 2011; Ordog vs. Bheka - YouTube
Mech Warfare 2011 - Immortal - YouTube

This one is a quick little vid - dad ran out of ammo so he simply ran up to "Giger" and knocked him down:

Mech Warfare 2010: Bheka owns Giger - YouTube

He and I talked recently and discussed doing something similar using quadrotors - flying 'bots with guns - it adds a whole new dimension to the sport. The quad he was looking at to do this and that could handle the weight of the guns and ammo would run him at least $500.00 or so...

I'd love to get into something like this, but I don't have the $$$ - Dad has spent a LOT of money over the years to support this hobby lol... He gets a lot of looks from people as he's in his 60's and he's competing against 20-30 year olds... Gotta have fun sometime, right?

 

Instead of using those soft "pellets", they should be equipped with .22 caliber automatics. Then you can see how strategic people can be.


Do they use cameras mounted on them to see, or just stand over the "town" to operate them??

 

Each robot is equipped with a WiFi camera. The combatants are only allowed to watch the action through their camera - most use laptop computers to view what the camera "sees" and they do it outside the arena - only the spectators can watch what goes on inside the arena.

In one of those videos, you can see, on the combatant's laptop, what looks like a crosshair - this is how they aim the gun at the target.