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Heavy metal massacre Tuning in to rock 'em, sock 'em Robot Wars by RUPERT BOTTENBERG
Sounds like a dull test run at an MIT robotics lab. The future of driveway maintenance, perhaps. But then some nasty spikes poke out of a grill in the floor. The breadbox is pinned from underneath, its six tiny wheels spinning helplessly. Within seconds, another, larger machine has roared in behind the breadbox, grabbing it with heavy steel pincers. That's when the circular saw comes into play. "The transmission fluid is beginning to flow! It's becoming a bloodbath," howls an English sports announcer's voice. "Dead Metal's saw is ripping through her armour! It's all over but the hacking and the slashing!" The crowd, tucked safely behind half-inch plexiglass plates, goes berserk. Welcome to Robot Wars. Remember Survival Research Laboratories? The American industrial art squad who, through the '80s, built terrifying battlebots and set them loose on one another in absurdly violent and destructive public performances? Well, picture that crossed with American Gladiators and you've got Robot Wars, a damn good reason to start drinking early on Saturday nights. The program is in fact a BBC production, shot at a warehouse complex in London's Docklands. Its roots are pure, bloodyminded Yankee ingenuity, though. In August of '94, the first Robot Wars event happened in California, when a rogue's gallery of robotics enthusiasts, many on down-time between Hollywood F/X gigs, decided to make S.R.L.'s mechanical mayhem an audience-participation event. Safety regulations were established, rules laid down in the interest of fair play, and the robots let loose. The Wars became regular events, religiously attended by a small but rabid clique of converts, many of whom had spent months perfecting entries that would be bashed, torn and shattered within seconds of the starting bell. Gutting Granny's wheelchair The English took it one step further. They put it on the damn telly. A six-episode pilot run drew millions of viewers, and suddenly Sheffield and Birmingham were found to be overrun with amateur Terminator-techs. Four-eyed geeks and paramilitary social defectives were gutting Granny's electric wheelchair and Dad's toolshed to construct the metal monsters they so proudly display in the Pit, the backstage workspace where last-minute fine-tuning preps the robots for combat. Strategy is everything on Robot Wars. Speed and manoeuvrability are as important as brute force and resilience, and given the weight of metal plating, directly opposed as well. A chainsaw and piercing spikes aren't much use when your robot's been flipped on its back by something that looks like an oversized, radio-controlled doorstop. And then there are the house robots. Basically forces of nature, they're larger, heavier and better armed than the competitors, and their sole purpose is to rend all comers to pieces. Witness Mathilda, a steel-plated armadillo with a chainsaw tail, or Sergeant Bash with his flamethrower attachment. Craig Charles (Lister of English sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf) may be the host, and co-host Phillippa Forrester may be the backroom babe, taunting losers as they withdraw to the Pit. But the real stars of Robot Wars are the house robots. The episode of February 5, '99, had no less than 6.4 million Brits glued to their TV screens. Talks are already underway for live broadcasts and local battle royales. And now that the Space station has picked up Robot Wars, Canada is primed for a round of robot fever. Go on, go out to the garage and take a look at your lawnmower, all tucked away for the winter. It might just be your ticket to glory. Robot Wars airs Saturdays at 7pm and again Sunday afternoons at 12:30pm on Space: The Imagination Station. Visit www.robotwars.co.uk for more info |
Something that looks like a breadbox on wheels with a plastic snow shovel attached to the front is whirring and puttering its way across an asphalt floor. The unassuming little machine is negotiating a course through a series of concrete blocks and fences of steel piping, toward a finish line some 30 or 40 feet away.