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Robotic Combat is most famous
for its television programme, Robot Wars (and other similar programmes
such as Battlebots
and Robotica)
which was shown all around the world featuring robots from across the
globe. The TV programme lived for many years but the sport grew and grew
outside of television with roboteers organising live events for themselves
which an audience could attend to see the destruction close up. The FRA
(Fighting Robot Association) was then set up which is an organisation
containing roboteers and event organisers. Live events occurred all over
the place with robots fighting each other in a purpose built arena. This
page of this website explains the history of robotic combat and Robot Wars
in more detail.
In the early 1990s a guy named Marc
Thorpe (the Godfather of Robot Wars) who
was fed up of doing the house work decided to make it more fun by making
robots do the work for him. He wanted radio-controlled robots to do the
vacuum cleaning, the
dusting or whatever. They didn't perform the way he wanted them to so he
made it even more fun by putting chain saws on top of
them so he could have robot battles. He then had the idea of putting power
tools on top of a radio-controlled chassis to have some real fun with
them. And that was the start of it all,
Robot Wars had begun and Marc Thorpe was the inventor of it all and it all
started in San Francisco.
Marc got some participants for
the new sport and they staged it as a live event (not for television) in
San Francisco. Television cameras were only there to record the event for
the local news. Tom Gutteridge (the head of Mentorn) saw an amateur tape
of the annual San Francisco event and he was first introduced to the
concept of Robot Wars. He could see that it could work very well as a
staged television show. Tom employed Steve Carsey (a freelance producer at
the time) to work with him on developing Robot Wars for UK television. And
so the television series of Robot Wars was born.
Tom had to persuade TV
broadcasters that it was a good idea. The BBC eventually agreed. Steve
then got together a team of people who would make it al work and come
together. They all got together in 1995 to decide who would advise the production
and get the general public interested in it. They had to get the public to
build robots and take part in the UK event. Derek Foxwell (now technical
consultant on Robot Wars) and Mat Irvine (now a judge) got this sorted
out.
The BBC wanted to take the
idea to the next stage and make a pilot. They had to make a pilot
program to show that it could really work and make people interested in
it. They found robots in the USA to come over to English shores to fight
against some built UK robots here for the pilot programme. Derek designed
and built the English robots which would take on the Americans. Pre-production began on
this testing programme which was made in which British
robots battled against three American robots in a warehouse in West
London. The time was 1995. They sent out invitations to people they
thought would be interested and when the pilot programme was recorded they
had managed to get a fair number of interested audience members. Now, they
had something on tape and by this time, news of a potential new television
series was going around. Tapes were sent out and the show was beginning to
get mentions on TV and in magazines.
After BBC executives saw the
pilot back in 1995, meetings took place and then finally it was decided
that it was all going to happen and the television show was going to be
made.
After seeing a successful TV
programme at around this time called Gladiators, Steve Carsey came
up with the idea of the house robots. He gave
the job of designing and building them to the BBC Visual Effects
department headed by Chris Reynolds who were able to build fighting
machines which fit the criteria that Robot Wars wanted. The house robots
then came to be.
The small
production team started to find roboteers who would do battle for the
first show. Potential roboteers found out about it. They needed 36 robots
for the first series because they needed a number so they would be able to
run an elimination contest. They managed to get 33 robots so three more
stock robots had to be added to make up the numbers.
In November 1997, the first
series of Robot Wars began recording in a big warehouse in the London
Docklands. The first series was aired on television in January 1998. Jeremy Clarkson presented the show back then but for only one
series. In this first series, 36 teams did battle in a set created out of
mostly scrap found in an aircraft scrap yard where old tornado planes went
when they were no longer needed. After the success of the first series,
they quickly decided to make another. The second wars was made later that
year which featured 72 robots. Craig Charles took over from Jeremy
Clarkson for the second series. Also, Sir Killalot first appeared in
series two. After more success and a rapidly growing number of viewers,
they made series three a year later which had even more robots on it (144
robots to be exact) and then series four with even more viewers than
before and the popularity keeps on growing and growing with the number of
robots being built exceeding all the necessary numbers. More than 3000 entries were
received for the fifth wars and the number keeps on growing. The show
keeps on getting better and better with new house robots, different
presenters, more arena hazards and improved and more advanced competitor
robots.
Over the seven years since
recording of the first wars began, they have met many challenges and many
hurdles along the way which they all learnt from. These helped them to
improve the show, to improve the set and also the house robots.
During the seven years, they
have recorded it in many locations including the London Docklands,
Shepperton Studios, RAF Newton in Bingham near Nottingham and other
places.
The TV show of Robot Wars
finished after the Seventh Wars finished airing (March 2004). No more
series are planned but re-runs of them will still continue to air. The
sport of Robotic Combat lives on in live
events. There
are still hundreds, if not thousands of roboteers and robots all over the
world and they still intend to keep on fighting others with their
machines. After the
demise of the TV show, the sport was taken to a new level. The governing
body of robotic combat - the FRA
is an organisation containing roboteers and event organisers who organise
live robotic combat events featuring robots from all over the globe and
they set the standards of robotic combat, the build rules and safety
guidelines for
these live events and the open circuit. The
future of the sport of robotic combat is in the hands of the FRA and the
roboteering community who are
carrying the banner of robot combat into the future. Also See:
The Sport of Robotic Combat, Robot
Wars Info, Live Robotic Combat Events,
The FRA |
