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February 19, 2001

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What Sticks:
Nerd Gladiators Face Off, Save America

Engineers who actually build machines and make them run are sorely lacking in our economy, says our new online columnist Wendy Wolfson.

By Wendy Wolfson (wendy@wolfsonpr.com)

Wendy Wolfson ehind a bulletproof enclosure, two radio-controlled robots battle it out. They maneuver about, flipping each other into pop-up buzz saws and spike hazards. Pressure Drop, weighing in at 173 pounds with an articulated rock chisel, struggles to keep up with the more agile 106-pound Anklebiter, a short, wedge-shaped bot armed with a rotating saw. Unexpectedly, having ruled the ring so far, Anklebiter gets stuck against prongs protruding from the arena perimeter. The referee stops the contest due to immobility. Pressure Drop wins an upset victory by knockout.

The crowd boos wildly. "Look at the domination!" crows the announcer.

In the next round, Alien Gladiator, fitted with a spring-loaded sledgehammer, goes up against Deadblow, who weighs in at 114 pounds and sports an articulated spiked hammer. Deadblow's pneumatic pickax flies off, but it still emerges victorious. "You won the match, but you lost your pecker!" quips the announcer. The conquering contestant, mourning the loss of his bot's appendage, is oblivious to the irony.

This is the Comedy Central cult cable show, "BattleBots."

Contestants blithely pit radio-controlled robots against each other in timed rounds. Robots are judged on jabs, slams, and hazard damage. The robot that first incapacitates the other or wins a three-minute judges' decision goes on to the next round. Color is provided by two sportscasters, Sean Salisbury, a former football commentator, and Bil "I love annihilation" Dwyer. Bill Nye, the Science Guy, gives technical advice, getting passionate about torque and controllers. Heidi Mark is the buxom Bot Babe who awards the trophy (a giant Golden Nut) to the victor and asks the "hard-hitting, Barbara Walters type" questions like, "Are you married?"

"BattleBots'" gladiatorial robot combat combines the raw aggression of professional wrestling, the finesse of a demolition derby, and the universal appeal of "Baywatch." It is a slyly ironic glorification of nerd-dom.

But it well may very well be the driver of American technical hegemony in the new century.

While much is made of the divide between the digerati and technical "have-nots", nobody seems to be paying attention to our engineering deficit. Engineers, who actually build machines and make them run, are becoming harder to find.

Not too long ago, sending a man to the moon was considered a truly monumental achievement, and astronauts provided the inspiration for many a technical career.

Now, nobody cares; the space program is taken for granted, and NASA has to perform public-relations gyrations to get money from Congress. Math and hard-science paths have increasingly few takers and even fewer heroes.

Some believe that without a strong technical base, the United States will lose its world economic domination. The companies that will be successful in the emerging economy will be those that actually manufacture stuff. We find it easier to import our engineers than grow them ourselves. The U.S. Department of Immigration increased the number of H-1B high-tech visas available to employers for the next three years to 200,000 visas a year, up from 115,000 in 2000, but most of these are purely software-oriented or academic.

Elite technical universities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where students are already highly skilled and motivated, have programs such as the wildly popular Seminar 6.270. Competing teams of students have just three weeks to transform a grab bag of electronic components--sensors, batteries, motors and Legos--into a problem-solving robot. Any additional hardware must cost less than $20. Once a match begins, the robots must work independently of human direction at complex tasks such as stacking sugar cubes within marked-off quadrants, or collecting white balls according to arcane mathematical rules. Nerd aggression is given an outlet and, more important and perhaps rarer to the contestants, the chance to have it publicly rewarded.

But "BattleBots" is to the MIT trials what the World Wide Wrestling Federation is to its Olympic wrestling counterpart--unabashedly showy and popularized. Anybody can apply to be a contestant simply by signing up on a Website. MIT contestants have to develop high-level task strategies and program them into their creations. "BattleBots" contestants build radio-controlled robots, with the express goal of wreaking as much destruction as possible. A more simple-minded goal, perhaps, but one which still requires skill, creativity, and imagination.

While the show is oriented to the average adolescent guy, women play, too. Female contestants, however, seem to take a more playful approach than going straight for testosterone-driven destruction. They don't usually win, but they show flashes of originality and humor. Mouser Mecha Catbot, built by a 12-year-old girl, has a lifting arm to upend the competition; Super Chiabot conceals a whirring buzz saw under tufts of English ivy. "Buddy, Don't Play in the Street", a red fire truck driven by Buddy Lee, the eponymous Lee Jeans mascot doll, and a bunch of stuffed Dalmatians was proffered by Team Fembot, two female robot builders in silver-lame jumpsuits. Though Buddy's fire truck was a surprisingly sturdy battering ram, it carried no weapons at all! It was wrecked by Spaz, a spinning, round robot armed with a prong. Sensing victory, Spaz started pounding the stuffed Dalmatians in a gratuitous burst of violence.

The British have a classier "BattleBots"-style offering on The Learning Channel called "Junkyard Wars" (www.junkyardwars.com), a fevered, post-apocalyptic engineering challenge set in a real junkyard. Two teams made up of mechanics, motorcycle-fiend cops, engineers, and truck drivers have just 10 hours to scavenge the junkyard, designing and building a working machine as they go--in one episode, a monster tractor--using only whatever they can find. Advised by a visiting expert, they are equipped with a blackboard, necessary tools, and radio headsets. Then their creations compete in a final showdown.

The Brit version of engineering edu-tainment has more intellectual content; the participants actually debate things such as differentials, transmissions, and engine power as they eat lunch al fresco in the junkyard, covered with grease, sweat, and grime. The scientific concepts are even depicted in detailed animations. Unlike the purely decorative Bot Babe, the Junkyard Wars women are equally greasy, sweaty, and grimy, not to mention as adept with a blowtorch as the guys.

Yet BattleBots' Coliseum imagery isn't accidental. It is truly bread and circuses for the masses. Is "BattleBots" our last great hope for making engineering enticing to the average American, especially when competitors hold, in the words of the host, "degrees in ass-kicking?" You don't need to be admitted to MIT to be a contender, and, unlike watching "Junkyard Wars," there's little danger of actually learning too much science during the half-hour.

Nevertheless, when the BattleBots land on the killing saws, sparks fly, fragments of metal go airborne, and the crowd goes wild, and another American kid at home learns that it just might be cool to be smart. One of the interviewers, a comic with cool-guy sideburns, pegged it when he said, "If there is one thing we've learned from this show, is that people like to see s*** flying around."

The title of this column was inspired by an overheard conversation in an airport lounge during which a high-tech executive was explaining company strategy into a cell phone: "We'll keep throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks."

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