Introducing: BuggleBots - Bristol's new robot combat web series
Posted on: 08 Aug 2018BuggleBots is an upcoming robot combat web series aiming to showcase robotics as an explosive source of entertainment and an educational gateway into the scientific field, while also maintaining its overall UK presence. Thirty teams from across the UK and beyond will battle their bots to be crowned champion in their first, sold-out filming this September.
With a cast of hosts, commentators, referees, and judges, the BuggleBots team hope their newly-founded project will make their Youtube channel a hit with all ages, and encourage even more people to join Bristol’s robotic scene. To find out a little bit more about BuggleBots, 365Bristol caught up with their co-producer, Joe Brown.
Hi Joe! So, what kinds of events do BuggleBots put on?
The Bugglebots filming in September is an event we're putting on especially to create this show; it's a sold-out, two-day filming session in September with four audience time slots over the weekend suited to all ages. In Bristol, we have a great robot fighting scene; we regularly have robot combat events at Bristol Bot Builders - which is basically robot wars in pubs! It's a bunch of fun, our next event is 19th August at the Lanes from 4 pm and everyone can get involved - it's free!
Why did BuggleBots start, and what does it want to achieve?
Bugglebots was created in response to Robot Wars being cancelled by the BBC. Robot fighting is starting to become more mainstream as TV shows in America and China have kicked off this year. Sarah Maylan (a roboteer) and Benjamin Hassan (a huge robot wars fan) wanted to keep the momentum going here in the UK, so they got me a bunch of people and me from Robot Wars and the live scene involved in making this show. The aim is to celebrate robot fighting at the smaller sizes of robot - our show will be focused on beetle weight 1.5kg robots which we think is a fantastic weight class as the robots are cheap and accessible to build while still producing those big hits we want to see on our screens!
The BuggleBots website says the series aims to be an educational insight into robotics and STEM subjects as a whole. Why do you think it’s important to get people excited about STEM?
In the UK, there are not enough people choosing Science and Maths subjects beyond GCSE and a general shortage of engineers. In some fields, there are many more jobs than people studying the subject! Building fighting robots is a brilliant way to learn some skills in electronics, design and engineering. Robot Wars was one of the reasons I chose to become an engineer and I know that's also the case for many others. We need shows like this to show kids that you can do amazing things by studying STEM subjects and those things are also a lot of fun!
So, do you need a scientific background to get into this?
No. Particularly at these smaller weight classes it's very easy to get started. There's plenty of helpful online resources and an amazing community of roboteers to help you get into the building. Roboteers come from a diverse range of backgrounds, and so many are self-taught, so if you want to build a robot, start today! Though a love of robot carnage helps of course...
How do you make a BuggleBot?
Our robots are at beetleweight weight class - so the main requirement is they can't weigh more than 1.5kg. Apart from that, they're typically some motors, electronics to move the motors, a battery and a radio controller to get the robot moving. Most chassis at this size are made out of chopping board and bits of metal. I'd say the only skills you need to learn is some basic soldering!
With Bristol Bot Builders we've been hosting bot building sessions at the Bristol Hackspace before our pub events, and they've been great to get new roboteers involved and learning the basics of bot building. We’d definitely like to do something similar with Bugglebots if the opportunity arose.
What makes the perfect, competition-winning BuggleBot? Any tips for makers?
Often just having the best wedge that scrapes the ground the right amount to get under other robots works well. Some people say that robot fighting is like a game of rock paper scissors so there's no perfect design - you can beat some and not others and the strategies are always changing. It's quite a new class so I'd say always explore new ideas and try things that haven't been done before.
What’s the most exciting fight you’ve had so far?
At our last event, we had a brand-new robot called Maximum Ogredrive cutting massive gouges in other robots with its overhead saw. It was a real spectacle to see it getting to unprotected parts of bots… slicing and dicing… hearing that noise as it cut deep gouges out of armour, tyres and even through electronics! You can see it in action at the beginning of our audience trailer.
