BattleBots 2015 - The Aftermath

The BattleBots reboot series has now come to an end, with an excellent last set of fights. The final was a judges' decision, in case you didn't see it, and boy was it close. A real forward-and-back fight, with both robots getting their turn on top of the battle. Ultimately I think the win was well-deserved, but then I think a win for either team would have been.

Before I keep going, there are going to be spoilers. Big spoilers. So go watch the series from start to finish now.

In fact, I'm starting with the biggest spoiler of the lot

Congratulations

...to Team Aptyx and Bite Force! They were underdogs going in for me, with a weapon that looked suspectly ineffective against the rammer-lifters, powerful flippers and monstrous spinners in the tournament. From their very first battle against Warhead, though, they've shown what they're made of! Able to hold off deadly spinners like Tombstone (I'll get to them in a second) and beat a fellow clamp-lifter design in Overhaul. It's a solid bot that has shown tracks don't always spell trouble, except for their opponent!

Team Aptyx captain Paul Ventimiglia lifts the nut
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l74gy_H8ww

Congrats to Team Hardcore Robotics and Ray Billings too, taking second place with the deadly and already-infamous Tombstone. It's an old design but the team has improved upon it over the years and kept it deadly, inspiring similar designs in just about every weight class in nearly every roboteering country. This year they showed us why they were given an honourable mention in the Robot Combat Hall of Fame way back in 2005, with the lighter version Last Rites given full membership in 2009.

Joint third place goes to Team Inertia Labs, showing us that they can still build flippers to pack a punch with Bronco, and Team Raptor who's ingenuity and MacGyver-ing skill carried Ghost Raptor far in the tournament despite its weapon snapping in half in the first fight!

Series 2?

This does deserve a question mark, since there's been no official talk of a second series. Lets face it though, with 4.6 million viewers tuning in each week, bringing ABC out top its the highly-competitive Sunday night time slot twice, it would be a big surprise if the reboot didn't get a second series. Hell, even its producers say "all signs point to yes" and they're already busy thinking of what changes should be made.

Perhaps the biggest change planned is to revert to the traditional open tournament style. This really requires more episodes and more time which the audience isn't going to want to spend waiting an hour between fights (yes, that was actually happening). But with more competitors and more battles to fit in, hopefully there'll be less time for thumb-twiddling! More competitors also means a more interesting competition, since every team has more to compete with and there should be more variety. The worse entries will probably get less focus as well, if any. Hopefully, interesting designs (even if they aren't too competitive) will still get some TV time though.

Changes are also going to be made to the arena. Quite what isn't entirely clear but chances are the hazards will be featured more. In the first series, a different hazard was introduced each round (something which wasn't exactly made clear on air) so we didn't get the chance to see some of them for most of the tournament. What has been said is that the changes should promote inventiveness and should be a challenge to overcome. From that I'm assuming the screws, which some people want nerf'd, will remain as dangerous as they were in this series.

In terms of the televisual experience, there is going to be more focus on the technical aspects of the robots. I am all for this, as is most of the robot combat/roboteering community. It was always missing from the original BattleBots shows but in Robot Wars the quick tour of the complex-looking inner workings of the machines gave the show a more rustic, garage, almost steampunky vibe. It also gives a more meaningful background to the robots and the competitors, rather than the dramatised 'reality' TV fakeness that plagues most shows theses days.

The insides of Radioactive as shown in a Tested video
On the program, we only got a brief look courtesy of Tombstone
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnACo3zgI5k

Beyond the Box

The reboot of BattleBots hasn't just been something to watch on a Sunday night. This was the biggest promotion of the sport for a decade and has shown countless people (alright, 4.6 million really) that roboteering is still going strong. It's also given many a reason to get involved with engineering by building their own bot. Already I have heard someone saying they want to built an autonomous cluster bot, with one half a drone to identify the target and direct the other half, a full-body spinner. This seems needlessly complicated, and it is, but I love the out-of-the-box thinking and ingenuity behind it - something I hope to see even more of in BattleBots and elsewhere.

BattleBots' focus on heavyweights (or 'heavierweights' if you like, since they're just a bit over the standard weight limit) will perhaps also help preserve the use of heavier weight classes. When RoboGames missed a year due to a lack of funding in 2014, it was looking like heavyweights might fall out of use and the sport was going to 'shrink'. Of course, people searched their pockets and gave to bring RoboGames back from the brink and now that BattleBots has been focused entirely on the heavy class, it's looking like it won't go the same way superheavies have - and good thing, since heavyweights are one of the most spectacular weight classes in use.

Heavyweights Gruff and Whoops! getting separated during a battle at RoboGames 2015
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-8kzYdKfOc

With some luck, now that people have been reminded of robotic combat and shown that it is still around, people will start looking for, or at least noticing more, live events and local competitions. Hopefully its going to get a good boost from BattleBots coming back to TV.