BBC risks wrath of android rights activists with Robot Wars reboot

Re: Who is presenting?

Not sure 'Flippa' would be quite so easy on the eye these days.

RW was a bit of a guilty pleasure back in it's day. Hopefully they'll have learned to forget about the light robots and concentrate on those heavy ones made from scavenged bits of challenger tanks etc.

Re: Who is presenting?

Yep, I'd go with that, or even Robert Llewellyn and Lisa Rogers.

Re: Who is presenting?

Lets be honest, its not Phillipa Forrester, its the leather pants.

Re: "Yep, right up there with Star Gazing Live."

"As is smashing the fuck out of robots glorified RC cars!" TFIFY...

Wasn't Messr Sharkey a judge on Robot Wars anyhoo?

He was.

He was also nominally "in charge" of a project at Magna, when I worked there in 2001 - 2002, which involved a "show" using autonomous robots which didn't work, mainly because they were built from cheap B&Q battery drills and the plastic gears lasted about 30 minutes. He lost interest in actually keeping the things working, despite Magna putting a lot of money into the arena where they were to be the star attraction. There was even a completely false story about one of the robots escaping - even if it had "broken out of its paddock", it wouldn't have been able to get as far as the car park before either throwing a cog or running out of battery (or more likely, just continually bashing its head against one of the arena walls), let alone reaching the M1.

The story did find its way to the main BBC News website at the time, but I can't find it there now, perhaps they have removed it.

The robots were "handed over" to us, the centre's engineering team, and we spent several weeks investigating how to make the blasted things more reliable and actually able to do the things they were being advertised as doing. Eventually (IIRC) we decided to keep them going as they were because there wasn't a budget available to completely rebuild them. Eventually they were ditched altogether.

Sharkey was disinterested in the little robots because the next project was more exciting - robotic airships. Unfortunately they were just as awful. They had so little lifting power that the electronics was seriously short of battery power. They were intended to fly around the building (Magna is built inside an old steelworks) but not only were they too weedy to overcome the light airflow through the building without being pushed sideways, their sensors - essentially the ultrasonic focus units from Polaroid cameras - simply didn't work and they kept crashing into things.

The things were so seriously behind schedule, and Sharkey wouldn't put any more students on the task (the project was basically being run by a pair of Phd students), that I had to bring a friend of mine up from South Wales to work the summer holidays finishing off the mechanical parts - cutting, shaping, glueing bits of Carbon fibre.

The escaping robot story evidently created a lot of interest because I note that shortly after I left this story popped up about one of them escaping. To be honest, this story is slightly more believable as the building they were being developed in had large roller-shutter doors at both ends and the balloons did occasionally end up tangled in the overhead crane even while I was there. On the other hand, this followup story smacks of overegging the pudding again as I really don't think the blimp would have stayed together for long enough to get 300 miles away. More likely it had crashed into a tree and was floating down the Don.

Needless to say (but I will anyway) the blimps never worked and were never - as far as I'm aware - put into use.

So the name Noel Sharkey is a bit "meh" to me, and his arch-rival Kevin Warwick (the bloke who had an RFID chip implanted in his hand) is just as bad.

I had a great time working at Magna, though the management was awful. I note that they are no longer open all year round and find that not at all surprising as the place simply couldn't make money. The appointment of a manager to manage the maintenance department's manager was only a symptom and I was "made redundant" in 2002, along with a colleague from the maintenance department, bringing that department down to two actual engineers and two managers. About three months later they appointed a new engineer - on a much lower salary than the rest of us had been getting - and then they sacked the manager's manager. Within 18 months of me leaving there were only two members of permanent staff on the whole site who had also been there when I was "made redundant".

Me? Bitter? Not really; although I was out of work for 9 months after that, it gave me the push to enable me to start up on my own as an electrician, and it cut many of the ties my new family had with South Yorkshire, enabling us to move to South Wales to be nearer my parents and where for the first five years we owned a house mortgage-free, prices being that much lower down here.

I've not been back since, though now that one of my ex-colleagues has actually gone back to work at Magna part-time, perhaps I should visit.

As for Robot Wars, my boys have recently, and completely independently, discovered the original series which is being shown nightly on "Challenge" (ch 145 Freesat / ch 45 Freeview). They are quite excited by the prospect of a new series, though they are getting a bit jaded by the old one.

Me, I went off it when it stopped being about "clever" robots and obstacle courses and simply became people with too much disposable income burning it on national TV.

M.

Wow, you're really a barrel of laughs.

You can still get one man and his dog on t'internet if it's excitement you're after?

your 'Troll' is better than the Reg's

I'm trying to work out if you're trolling. You do know "Look Around You" was a spoof written by the multi-talented Peter Serafinowicz, don't you? Although his take on Robot Wars would probably be worth a watch.

BBC Select. I'd almost forgotten about that! Did you watch it with or without the descrambling?

However, my all-time favourite retro show was that odd programme they used to show in the middle of the night which consisted of a bunch of random-looking black and white dots dancing all over the screen. The soundtrack was almost incomprehensible to the point of being little more than a loud hiss. Amazing!

Seemed to be on all the channels at one point. It was very avant-garde, yet they even showed it on ITV back then- can you imagine them being so experimental today?

They did an American version too; you can see it on the TV set in the film "Poltergeist" where I think it formed part of the plot.

If its boring...

@1980's coder

If its boring, then make one that is better and make it interesting again.

All that 1980's coding should come in handy.

Re: Upgrades?

Good idea, but I reckon that if you could power an effective rail gun on a robot that size you could just as easily dump all that charge into your victim and it'd be much more effective.

Re: Wow

Ah, Diotoir. :)

I remember that a lot of the robots carried a piece of its fur, as Team Diotoir helped so many of the other teams with spares and repairs.

Re: Wow

"Good for the BBC and hopefully they will make some more stuff of interest to me to win me back."

It makes no difference to the BBC whether you watch them or not, so long as you pay them they are happy. That's why they specialize in crap antiques, interview, cooking, quizzes with no prize money or impossible to win big. micro-short 'series', shows. They could show the testcard and not lose a penny.

If this is successful they will sell it to Sky (again).