• Published April 1, 2016

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There is no fate but what we make for ourselves – Kyle Reese (The Terminator, 1984)

In the future, machines built by man will engage in deadly combat armed with weapons intended to inflict untold carnage onto their opponents. This isn’t the plot from a sci-fi movie, instead this is the realm of Robowars!

The year was 2013 when South Africa was introduced to Robowars at the inaugural Geekfest. What many didn’t expect was the carnage that was to follow. At the time, two teams managed to construct robots. One of the teams, Ramshackle technologies had built a robot by the name of “Kill-E” that went on to decimate the opposition and win the tournament. What many didn’t know was that “Kill-E” was held together by duct tape and powered by the most powerful substance in the universe: Hope.

In an interview conducted this year, Ryan Young, from Ramshackle technologies, was able to divulge their secret to success:

What got you interested in robots?

I watched Robot Wars on TV when I was younger and I was obsessed with the idea of making my own robot to compete though at the time my interest didn’t go further than remote control cars and taking apart broken appliances. When Geekfest announced their first event I could not resist finally getting involved.

Do you compete elsewhere in the country and how big is the sport in S.A?

At the moment the sport is incredibly small here in South Africa and as far as I know Geekfest and Sci-fi Con have been our only events though abroad there is quite a community and in the US season 2 of BattleBots will begin filming soon

What advice would you give a budding robot builder regarding building their first robot?

I would probably advice to keep it simple, our team made the mistake of trying to make a complicated Bot in our first year instead of focusing on simple concepts like moving around the arena and it very nearly cost us.

Geekfest’s 2014 Robowars event saw Team Dominator victorious with their bot: “Krugernator”

Things changed a bit in during Geekfest 2015 when the tournament was introduced to a bit more variety in terms of how the robots competed with each other.

For one thing, since more bots were entered, more rounds such as a tug of war, precision driving between pillars and a round in which the robots had to knock down as many pins as possible. The final melee battle was between 2 robots: DNR Robotic’s “El Diablo” against Ramshackle Technologies “Deathray”. In the end, DNR Robotic took the crown.

At the inaugural sci-fi con event in 2015, the previous robots: “El Diablo”, “Krugernator” and “Deathray” went at each other. “Krugernator” won the challenge rounds while “Deathray” conquered all during the melee round.

Despite the chaos that can occur when two robots go toe to toe against each other , there are some things that are not allowed: radio jamming your opponent, un-tethered projectiles and lasers above 1 milliwatt, amongst others, are prohibited. The full list of rules and regulations can be found at the Geekfest facebook page

Robowars will again be back at Geekfest 2016 and seems poised to be bigger than ever. You can expect robot vs. robot carnage on a scale which has never been witnessed before in the country. Lets just hope that they don’t hold any grudges towards their human masters and won’t turn their weaponry on us once they are done battling each other.

Photographs by Dana da Silva

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Article Tags: featured · GeekFest · geekfest 2016 · Robots · Robowars · Robowars 2016

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