Robot Wars
Robot Wars is a television format that originated in Great Britain in the early 1990s , in which independent teams of two to three so-called roboteers compete against each other with remote-controlled vehicles in a protected arena. The goal of the robots is to make all opposing robots incapable of driving. The weapons used are, for example, pneumatically driven overturning mechanisms ( flippers ) or heavy, rapidly rotating disks with drivers ( spinners ). This creates spectacular scenes for the audience, which is why Robot Wars is extremely popular with the English audience.
There are over 400 teams with robots in England, some of them school classes, who build a robot as part of a technical internship.
Set of rules
There are currently fights in five weight classes held in Europe:
- Antweight class (up to 150 g)
- Beetleweight class (up to 1.5 kg)
- Raptor class (up to 6 kg)
- Featherweight class (up to 13.6 kg)
- Heavyweight class (up to 100 kg)
Exceptions are robots that move with legs. These may each have twice the weight. Guns are only prohibited if they could potentially endanger the audience or the progress of the event. For example, firearms with free-flying projectiles , explosives, acids , flamethrowers or radio jammers are prohibited. However, one of the house robots was allowed to use a flamethrower.
Only commercially available RC remote controls in the 40 MHz band are used for radio control. Remote controls in the 2.4 GHz range have also been permitted since 2008.
Robotwars in Germany
In 1999 the TV station RTL II tried to establish the format in Germany as well. In 2001, four robots were mobilized for the first German championship . The first German champion was the Ansgar robot from Team Thomsen from Ahrenviöl near Husum . The second German championship was held in Nottingham in 2002. The winner was Black Hole from Dachau. Since 2003, the German Robotwars association German Roboteers Association (GRA) has been organizing events in Germany with fights in various weight classes under the title Mad Metal Machines . In addition, some German robots also took part in international championships. The most successful team in 2003 was the Bavarian Tsunami team , which despite strong competition made it to the group finals of the world championship.
On October 31/1. November 2016, the Robot Wars recordings from March 2016 in Glasgow were broadcast on Kabel Eins. In addition, ProSieben Maxx repeated this on December 24, 2016. From July 16, 2017, the new recordings from spring 2017 will be shown there.
Since 2017, two-day robot exhibition fights in the style of Robotwars have been held by the German Roboteers Association at Intermodellbau in Dortmund and the Maker Faire in Hanover.
Robotwars on German television and theater
The first dubbed English episodes of Robotwars were moderated by Christian Möllmann . The episodes with German participants were then moderated by the DSF presenter Jürgen Törkott . In addition, reports on GRA events were shown in the Sat.1 midday magazine.
In 2006, the members also made a guest appearance with their robots in an episode of the television series Alarm für Cobra 11 - Die Autobahnpolizei .
For the Münchner Kammerspiele , the German Roboteers Association eV (GRA) provided three combat robots in the 13.6 kg class in 2009/2010. These were then to be seen for more than 20 performances in the play "Security Conference".
In the television series Mein Mann, seine Hobby und I , the story of a 6-kg combat show robot from the Rheinpower team was shown from the creation of the bot to its fight in a tournament.
Web links
- Mad Metal Machines - events organized by the GRA in Germany
- European Federation (English)
- German Roboteers Association - German Robotwars Association