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"  &amp;quot;In the blue square, we have RPM,&amp;quot; the announcer intones, &amp;quot;and in the red square, we have Hot Stuff!&amp;quot; The spectators, leaning forward in their seats, cheer wildly for the fighters in the ring.  It&amp;#039;s got all the requisite trappings\u2014the packed bleachers, the overpriced concession hot dogs\u2014but this is no typical one-on-one bout. For one thing, the competitors are machines made of plastic and hardened steel. And for another, this face-off is more violent than even the fiercest WWF match. When the bots get the signal to go, they hurtle themselves into one another at full speed, shearing bits of metal off of one another and kicking up showers of sparks. Welcome to RoboGames, the Olympics of the robotics world, where robots in more than 50 different competition categories strut their stuff\u2014and where the best robot rumblers risk annihilation every time they enter the ring. Each remote-controlled bot in the combat competition, which took place this weekend at the San Mateo Event Center in California, has a signature strategy to decimate its opponents. RPM has a dense metal wedge designed to scoop challengers off the floor and flip them over, and Hot Stuff has a retractable claw arm capable of hoisting other bots more than a foot into the air. &amp;quot;Hot Stuff wants to get that grab in to show its dominance,&amp;quot; the announcer says as the bot&amp;#039;s arm lunges at RPM, which was veering dangerously close. But that dominance is fragile, as the next series of maneuvers proves. Though Hot Stuff manages to lift RPM briefly, RPM&amp;#039;s sheer weight topples Hot Stuff onto its side. Just when it looks like Hot Stuff&amp;#039;s hubris is going to be its undoing, the embattled bot turns the tables, trying the audacious claw move one more time\u2014and, this time, succeeding. Watching Hot Stuff lift RPM bodily off the ground is as grittily awe-inspiring as watching a weightlifter hoist a 500-pound dumbbell. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s a lift!&amp;quot; the announcer shouts over the din of the crowd. While many matches come down to judicial decision, today it is clear that, as RPM dangles helplessly above the ground, &amp;quot;the winner is ... Hot Stuff!&amp;quot; After the match, Hot Stuff&amp;#039;s creator, Jerome Miles, face flushed, heads back to the builders&amp;#039; room to make some minor tweaks to his bot before the next bout. Miles first started entering robotics competitions as a teenager, and years later, he still can&amp;#039;t get enough of the thrill. His friend and fellow competitor Bob Pitzer, standing by, ruminates on what motivates garage builders like Miles to continue honing their craft at odd hours for little or no pay. &amp;quot;As you play more and more with the robots, you can do better and better things,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;What really drives people is the competitive nature of the event. I call it geek ego\u2014you just want to be better than the next geek.&amp;quot; (Hot Stuff went on to take bronze in the 60-pound combat division.)   Hot Stuff after the battle. Nourishing your geek ego at a competition like this is no easy feat. The rivalries are fierce, and every innovation creates new technical challenges for all competitors. So many bots have perfected the use of wedge attachments to upend their opponents, for instance, that bots incapable of recovering after absorbing such an assault are doomed in multiple rounds of competition. &amp;quot;You have to be invertible and able to set yourself right again,&amp;quot; says Jim Yeh, whose robot Come to Mama won the 60-pound combat division this year. Yeh and his team made sure Come to Mama&amp;#039;s wheels contacted the ground whether it was right side up or upside down, allowing it to retain its maneuverability either way. And regardless of the technical sophistication of a bot&amp;#039;s offensive attack, it is history if it can&amp;#039;t stand up to the rigors of competition. One of the most overlooked keys to success is &amp;quot;reliability and not losing due to electrical failure,&amp;quot; says Daniel Yang, a leader of the Triton Robotix team from the University of California at San Diego. Before his robot Kraken&amp;#039;s matches, he explains, he zip-ties all of its batteries together so they don&amp;#039;t fall out when the bot gets jarred. A well-designed drive train also helps, says Brian Benson, whose combat bot Professor Chaos took bronze in the 120-pound division this year and gold in 2008. The more powerful a bot&amp;#039;s drive train, the more convincingly it&amp;#039;ll be able to smash into its opponents and win the war of attrition.  Competitions like this might seem like little more than geek entertainment, but the lessons participants learn prepping their bots for action help jumpstart innovation in robotics as a whole. One robot-rumble veteran, Jason Bardis, helped build the robotic arm for NASA&amp;#039;s Phoenix Mars lander, and others have worked at firms like iRobot, designer of the Roomba. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re having fun,&amp;quot; says Sam Coniglio, who won the bartending art-bots division with his CosmoBot 2.0. &amp;quot;When you allow people to play, great things come out of that.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/robots/a5789/robogames-2010-robot-battle/>