| Spin, hold and mutilate: 300-plus-pound robots fight to the finish in a mechanical version of wrestling 08/30/2001 By DOUG BEDELL / The Dallas Morning News FORT WORTH – In the end, the only thing to fear was not Phere itself, but Toro, a bull-horned, 325-pound fighting robot from Sausalito, Calif.
Phere landed upside-down like a defenseless tortoise. "It's kind of scary to see my steel baby getting flipped that fast and that high," says Gaylan Douglas, Phere's driver and chief architect. "It hurts, but we'll be back, and we'll be better." Team Xtremebots ( www.xtremebots.com), Mr. Douglas and his backers have reason to be optimistic. In the team's first foray into the ever-expanding BattleBots competition, Phere scored impressive wins over some of the more dastardly of 600 entries. Its steel wedge dismantled the drive mechanism of Mantaray in the first round, then disarmed the spinning hammer heads of GoPostal, ripped through OJ's metal shark teeth and butted aside the reinforced plastic armor of Anubis. Those names may not mean much to people outside fighting robot circles, but the hulking metal stars of this strange new sport are gaining cultlike followings nationwide. And, predict its organizers, events such as BattleBots will some day morph into a mechanical version of international heavyweight prizefighting. With sponsors such as Fort Worth's Infosphere Inc. ( www.infosphere.com), an e-business integrator and technology company, Team Xtremebots is positioned to build an enviable presence in this arena. The BattleBots phenomenon began building in the mid-1990s, when a handful of hobbyists started Robot Wars, a heavy-metal version of wrestling. The object was to design remote-controlled vehicles that would attack and destroy each other. Gradually, engineers and mechanical designers worldwide began comparing concepts and components across Internet discussion boards and Web sites, including Battlebots.com . Pneumatic lifting arms, tungsten carbide saw blades and high-torque mechanics were fused into eye-catching designs with names such as La Machine, Blendo and Vlad the Impaler. Events became theater. Robot teams entered the arena to special effects, and cheering crowds gathered behind Plexiglas walls that protected them from the flying shrapnel of the clashing robots. Television networks were immediately attracted. Today, a British version of the BattleBots TV show also airs on U.S. public television and in Europe. Tournament organizers are fighting to control a potentially lucrative market. Pay-per-view events have hit cable television with enviable ratings. Mass marketing forces, among them Comedy Central, have experimented with delayed telecasts from Phere's recent battles in San Francisco. "It's got the best of all worlds," Mr. Douglas says. "It's got just enough violence, and there's a very high design content in it, both artistic and mechanical. "You also have strategy, figuring out how you're going to fight each individual robot. From a fan's side of things, it's very appealing to both parents and their kids." Across the country, people such as Randy McGuffee, director of Infosphere's business development, are enthralled with the corporate benefits of robot sponsorship. Mr. Douglas, an architect for video stores and restaurants, has offices in the same building as Infosphere. He, 9-year-old son Gatlin and partner Stephen Rogers created a Phere prototype from an upside-down dog dish, then approached Mr. McGuffee and Infosphere president Cameron Ware about backing their dream machine. The Infosphere leaders decided the bot would be a relatively cheap corporate project that would be fun for its engineers, many of whom had previously worked in the aerospace industry. When some of the company's clients began sponsoring robots of their own, the concept took on a new dimension, Mr. McGuffee says. "This was fun from the get-go. ... It's adrenaline-pumping because it's that combat thing, the same thing as with wrestling. There's that energy to it, but it is really about building a better mousetrap, and that's what we do as a company," he says. Phere's first incarnation was produced just in time for the San Francisco contest. The robot has a 36-inch black dome with a low-slung, toothed wedge sticking out one side. Phere damages opponents by moving into position, then spinning in a circle at more than 300 revolutions per minute, as fast as a truck tire moving at 60 mph. When it catches a foe with the wedge, Phere uses the steel blades wrapped around its dome to flip the enemy bot skyward. Production crunches led to Phere's downfall in the quarterfinals, Mr. Douglas says. Toro got its flipper underneath Phere because engineers didn't have time to add a metal skirt to the bottom of their creation. Next time, he says, the super heavyweight Phere will be ready – along with two other models for the heavyweight and middleweight categories. Team Xtremebots knows it has its work cut out. The next BattleBots event in November will attract more than 1,000 entrants, organizers predict. "We're going to increase the torque and get it spinning up about 1,200 rpm," Mr. Douglas says.Phere, built by Team Xtremebots, uses an attack wedge and a rotating, steel-bladed dome to disable opposing robots. Photos and descriptions of many BattleBots competitors, as well as tournament rules, are posted at www.battlebots.com.
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