Cockbot

Robolympics was incredible — I judged 44 rounds of robot competitions, in middle- and heavyweight classes, sometimes at near risk of life and limb from huge flying parts of machines being ripped apart and flung into the Lexan in front of me. And true to my SRL training, I did not cringe, but laughed and moved closer to the action. On the judging panel with me were the producers of Battlebots, nice enough guys, though I did take advantage of the hours we spent together to grill them about their show — as in, “So, why the bimbo announcers? It really looked dumb. It alienated lots of people, including me.” Them: “I know. We know. We got lots of angry mail about it. We really wanted someone who could ask appropriate questions, knowledgeable and real, and the network didn’t care. They brought in Carmen Electra, etc. We told them it was wrong for the demographic, but they insisted it was right for what they thought the demographic was — even though we created it [the demographic]” Me: Yeah, you could have had a sexy geek girl who knew the difference between actuators and servos, the robot nerds would’ve really dug it and you would’ve gotten more viewers.” Them: “We know. We tried.”

Discovery Channel, Tech TV and others covered it, and competitors and exhibitors came from around the world — the Japanese robots were mind-blowing bipedal humanoid bots that picked themselves up into standing positions when they fell over. Simply amazing. Unfortunately I got food poisoning Saturday night and am still laid up, but here are pictures from the event:

http://laughingsquid.org/pix/2004_03/robolympics/index.html