Here's the scenario: With its plethora of ways to kill, humankind wipes itself off the face of the earth. Left behind are the robots, blindly following our instructions to carry on this war forever. With no understanding of why they're fighting, or of the futility of their actions, these bots embody the ghosts of human hatred - hatred that never made much sense in the first place.
A metallic taste of the future will curl your tongue when the Second Annual Robot Wars (August 19-20) comes to San Francisco's Fort Mason Center. At the first annual Robot Wars last year, a vision of the future gripped us with death struggles between wood-and-wire, metal-and-motor machines.
The designs at the first Robot Wars ranged from flip to fatal.
An innocent-looking ventriloquist's dummy on a tricycle dangled a trap on a long string. Another robot had a standard lawnmower blade, but it was mounted on top instead of on the bottom - not something you'd want to cuddle up to on a dark night.
A rattling one-banger engine powered a huge, abrasive, cut-off wheel on a monster with black spheres for wheels. In an arena already littered with the nuts and bolts of previous contestants, it took on a turtlelike opponent, whose one flipper was already hors de combat, heavily battened with thick wood. A wise choice for the turtle, as it turned out, since the abrasive wheel made light work of metal but bogged down in the turtle's wood, leaving a blue haze and the fine smell of fried pine. When the two machines collided, the crowd (wearing safety goggles and ready to run should one of the beasts break free) ooohed! as a fountain of sparks spewed upward from the friction of ultrahard carbide grit against cold steel. The unexpected conclusion had the turtle behind the monster, driving the abrasive wheel into the concrete, leaving a permanent gully and the evil one pinned, defeated, in the corner.
This year's contest promises more great robots and several new events. Robot Wars creator Marc Thorpe, who has a film background himself, notes that teams and individuals from movie studios, universities, computer-game companies, the aerospace industry, and Silicon Valley are entering. Hey, the people-watching alone is first-rate.
Individuals and sponsoring companies will pit their custom-built robots against each other in two events with four weight classes in each event. Weight classes run from under 20 pounds in the Super LightWeight class to 160 pounds (200 pounds for legged entries) in the HeavyWeight class. Also, a special class of autonomous robots will be featured. Another new spectacle is a gantlet to be run by small, noncombative robots (zig where you should zag and be crushed to a pancake). For more info (on attending, competing, videotapes of the competition, or the inevitable T-shirts), contact: robotwars@aol.com or www.robotwars.com/rwi/.
SCANS
Post-Human Gladiators
