They decided to go for it, had the rules published in a
convention flyer, and then set aside a clear space
near the loading docks of the Atlanta Hilton &
Towers hotel for the robots that showed up to fight.
Two bots showed, and fought each other until one
could no longer function. A crowd of nearly 200
watched the action and wanted to know how they could
get involved the next year. And thus Robot Battles
was born.
In 1994, Robot Battles had it's first celebrity
guest, when Robot Wars creator Marc Thorpe helped
judge the event. While Marc's event was on a much
larger scale, he seemed to appreciate the enthusiasm
that the Robot Battles builder brought to the event.
In fact, he returned in 1995 and was very positively
received as one of the true visionaries of the
growing sport.
In 1997, Robot Battles moved from the Atlanta Hilton
into a full theater complex in the Atlanta Apparel
Mart, which coincided with a dramatic increase in
attendance and participation. This can be directly
linked to the spread of the Robot Wars publicity and
several television shows that took a direct look at
what Marc was doing in San Francisco. Kelly was
joined on stage by technical engineer Mark Fingerman
and Brett Burkholder from Emory University as the
three took turns as MC for the event. This
arrangement lasted for three years until Mark took
over running the main Exhibit Hall for the
convention and Brett left Emory to become an
independent filmmaker.
In 1998, Robot Battles not only moved into a larger
hall, the 800 person capacity Regency Ballroom of
the Hyatt Regency Atlanta, but was also staged on a
smaller scale at the January Chattacon convention in
Chattanooga, Tennessee, marking the first time that
the event had been held separate from Dragon*Con.
The move into a larger facility and the continued
spread of awareness about robotics sports made for a
record event, with more robots and a larger crowd
ever before. And this was the first year that Kelly
started his tradition of wearing some bizarre
costume on stage as he MC's the event.
When Battlebots debuted on Comedy Central, the
heretofore underground sport became a national
obsession. Robot Battles responded by adding weight
categories and reaching out to schools and
universities to bring in new contestants, especially
younger ones. The result was incredibly positive,
and continues to this day. There are more teenage
and younger contestants participating in Robot
Battles than any other robotic combat event in the
country, and they are competing quite well. In fact,
the current record for youngest winner is nine years
old, and he just barely broke the old record of ten
years old.
2003 was another watershed year for Robot Battles.
Coming full-circle to our roots in Denver, we
brought Robot Battles to the Denver Opus Fantasy
Arts convention and met with the Mad Scientists. We
also staged our first Robot MicroBattles
competitions this year, both in Denver and in
Atlanta, responding to the increase in popularity of
the one and three pound combat robots, as well as
putting together entire tracks of robotics related
programming at both conventions. It was also the
year that Kelly was granted full membership in the
Denver Mad Scientists Society, something of which he
is quite proud and finds very amusing to add to his
resume.
The last several years have been very interesting as
well, including turning the Opus Fantasy Arts
convention event into a Robot Fighting League
national qualifying event, the expansion of Robot
Battles into North Carolina and Tennessee, continued
growth in Atlanta (standing room only crowds for
all events the past three years) and much more. After
eighteen years, more than twenty competitions, nine different
venues in four states, the interest and excitement
around Robot Battles continues to grow.
We look
forward to see what happens in the future, and hope
you'll be with us for the ride.
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