Ever watch Robot Wars on TV? I could never watch for long because it seemed a shame to destroy those lovingly designed and created machines. Plus Craig Charles was a little OTT.
However, there was another irksome feature besides CC – and that was the name itself. Take the first word Robot. In the ’50s and ’60’s a robot was a science fiction machine with human features. Like Robert the Robot in Fireball XL5. Autonomous, limited in intellect and often scary (RtR being an exception. He was benign and showed some personality – ‘On our way ‘ome’ he would intone with a buzzy voice like people who have had their voice box out.) They often had arms, legs, torso, head – bit like us really, but without any embarrassing bits.
In the late ’70s robots became a reality in car manufacturing. Now we had giant arms that could reach in to car bodies and spot-weld panels together or spray paint on them without even looking.
Now compare the ‘robots’ on Robot Wars. Nothing like the science fiction walking talking tin men or the assembly line robots. And I don’t just mean in appearance or purpose. I’m referring to the geeks in the gallery who are frantically wiggling radio control joysticks to control their – well – machines. Wait a minute! That’s not how a robot works, is it? These so-called robots are really just radio controlled cars or tanks.
If these machines were robots, they could be left to their own devices in the arena. A few simple add-ons to detect enemy robots, and a bit of computing power to control them and we could have true robot wars.
Actually, they still wouldn’t be wars – just battles but now I’m just being pedantic …
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