Gearheads: The Turbulent Rise of Robotic Sports

A friend, a late comer to the scene, very powerful competitor, loaned me his copy of this book, very marked up and highlighted, and also introduced me to some of the people like Trey in the book. I purchased it as a gift. I am not directly in the field.This book is somewhat similar to Steven Levy's Hackers, and a number of lesser works like Fire in the Valley. The history of "robotic" combat is comparatively short. It's similar to Roman bread and circuses. The author creates sympathy for the ill originator of the idea (a Lucasfilm technician) and easily picks on entertainment industry moguls/lawyers. Unfortunately, the history is dated (over 6 years since these events of the late 1990s and earliest 21st century, so the big problem is figuring out the "come-back" (an epilogue is needed)).It's a fast paced read, and likely a few errors, and while interest is world-wide, it mostly happens in California (Bay Area and LA). It covers none of the academic, industrial, or military robotics and focuses purely on avocational, gaming combat.If you wondered the whys and wheres of such shows like Battle Bots, Robot Wars, Robotica, Junk Yard Wars, and even Dean Kamen's FIRST came from, this is an informal and fairly OK way to read about them and the dynamic of the people behind this social phenomena.It's Fight Club meets Fry's Electronics and model radio control with a sprinkling of the RIAA and MPAA.

Great read if you have interest in learning the surprisingly turbulent history of combat robots. I was amazed to learn about all the people who I see in the sport now but were also heavily involved back then!

A good look at how robotic sports got started. The fact that I'm in it has nothing to do with anything. :-)

WONDERFUL book. Well written.

We're all waiting for the sequel.

I have purchased this as a gift for a nephew who is into robotics. His mother said he will love it.

We celebrate athletes of strength, agility, and skill. We do not celebrate nerds, who not only do not win, but do not compete. As the twentieth century was closing, though, nerds who had a special fascination for electromechanical gadgets had a previously impossible sport in which to show creativity, cunning, and a killer instinct. "Gearheads" these particular nerds were called, and their games were played under the names of "Robot Wars," "Battlebots," "Robotica" and others. While it remains to be seen if this revolutionary form of competition will be long-lasting, the sport has had a colorful beginning and plenty of people interested in it as spectacle. _Gearheads: The Turbulent Rise of Robotic Sports_ (Simon & Schuster) by Brad Stone is a funny, sad, and weird account of how these metal crunching monsters compete, and how greed and litigation ruins dreams.It is important to realize that the robots described herein are not necessarily machines that we would think of as robots. The gearheads' robots are manipulated by a controller in the same way that hobbyists operate radio controlled cars. But for competition, RC Car Joust didn't sound nearly as good as Robot Wars, and so the inventor of this competition, Marc Thorpe, expanded the definition. He was interested in starting a commercial venture that would give his family a sound future, and had been intrigued with machines that did performance art and some primitive mechanical jousting. Unfortunately for Thorpe, he had to find a backer. His partner, Steve Plotnicki, surely had the money; he was a record executive who had been responsible for such acts as the seminal rappers Run DMC. The eager but naïve Thorpe didn't check much into Plotnicki's record, which included vituperative litigation against his former stars. _Gearheads_ is largely about the legal battles that followed, and they are as vicious as any of the buzz saw, pneumatic ram, and knife battles that took place in the Robot Wars ring. The legal battles are long, and sad, but more entertaining are the description of the gearheads themselves, and the way they participated in a hobby that turned into an obsession for many of them. One of them says, "The thrill is hard to describe. It's better than fishing, a whole lot better than baseball. It's fighting and it's not fighting. It's just boys at play."Along the way, Stone describes the decades of violent and very noisy, not to mention illegal, robotic performance art spectacles arranged by Mark Pauline and his Survival Research Laboratories. Pauline was much more interested in the dadaism of destruction (and troublemaking in general) than in rule-bound competition. Also here are Woody Flowers, the MIT teaching genius who teamed up with Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, to start FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), robot competition for high schoolers that stressed cooperation as much as competition (and thereby seems to have lost much of its entertainment punch). Combining portraits of some very peculiar inventors, a troubling tale of lost fortunes and litigation, and amazing descriptions of battles between Spiny Norman, Blendo, Biohazard, Thor, Ziggo, Ginsu, Mechadon, and others, _Gearheads_ is fine entertainment, and might be an important documentation of a new sport's genesis.

A fascinating and often depressing look at how robotic combat moved from the hobbyists and performance artists into the world of courtrooms and television deals, and how greed and mismanagement almost killed the sport before it had begun.The book also tells the story of the builders, who were often unaware of the whole story and only wanted to to build and compete with the best robots they could build.And it's a story of a community that exists to this day. Of people with vision who still see bright future for robotic sports.But most of all, it's a fascinating warts-and-all look into the people who brought robotic combat to the mainstream audience. The decisions that were made, the court battles that were fought, the robots that were built, and the triumphs and disappointments of everyone involved.The only downside of the book is that it focuses almost exclusively on the big events. Maybe in a followup book, Brad (or someone else) will take a longer look at the many other smaller scale competitions that are held all around the country, and the regional organizations that are popping up as then robotic community continues to grow.But, it's a minor quibble and I can heartily recommend the book as a great place to start learning about one of the very few sports that rewards intelligence over brute strength.

Brad Stone has collected all the history of the birth of the sport known as Robot Wars.This book charts all the characters, events & dishes the dirt.A must read for anyone who is interested in Robot Wars or Battlebots

A terrible book, I couldn't get enough sleep for several days ;) The author tells us the stories of the battles behind the battles, and those are easily fought as hard as those between the machines.Thank you for those insights.