Human competitors don provocatively sloganed T-shirts. Kill All Robots. Expert analysis is provided by roboteer Bill Nye. There's even Baywatch 's Donna D'Errico to round out the, er, appeal of the broadcast team. The production was licensed by Comedy Central when a programming exec responsible for bringing in South Park caught wind of BattleBots and saw a fit.
Judges score the fights by competitors' well-placed hits, much like boxing.
Not that you can't expect to see total destruction by the sheer physics of a spinning blade or hammer blow. The first five BattleBots installments are for single eliminations. By the 13th or 14th episode, around the beginning of December, the fights move toward the final four. Robot performance artist Kal Spelletich was involved early with a project credited for blazing the robotic competition path, Survival Research Labs . In the interim, the San Francisco enthusiast has taken his robot work to a new level.