Robot Wars is a 1990s phenomenon, spawning a television show, in which amateurs compete in a tournament-style contest to see whose radio-controlled robot is the best at fighting. The first contests were held in the San Francisco area, and were inspired by the work of San Francisco artist Mark Pauline and his Survival Research Laboratories.

Early History
The first Robot Wars competition was held in August, 1994 at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, California. It was the brainchild of Marc Thorpe with financial backing from Sm:)e communications, a New York record company. The San Francisco based Robot Wars continued through 1997 when the partnership broke up, starting many years for legal wrangling between Thorpe and Profile Records (the former Sm:)e communications). Profile licensed Robot Wars to a UK production company who derived the Robot Wars television format and series.


The show
Robot Wars has since become a successful British television series, which has attracted a large cult following. The TV series is less anarchic than the original American version and has well-defined rules, classes and a tournament structure. In turn the UK series was remade in the US for television. Reruns are shown on PBS and G4 in America, and on the Sci Fi Channel, Jetix and UKTV People in the UK. Versions of the show have been shown in many different countries, including Sweden, Italy and Ireland. In some countries that prefer not to use the English commentary, the show is dubbed; in others commentary is provided by native-speaking commentators who attend the recordings in the UK.

There were nine series in the 7-year run of the UK program. Craig Charles (of Red Dwarf fame) hosted all except the first series, which was done by Jeremy Clarkson. The show was co-hosted by Philippa Forrester for six series and Julia Reed for two series, whilst Jayne Middlemiss co-hosted the final UK series. Running commentary of the battles was provided throughout the run by BBC football (soccer) commentator Jonathan Pearce.

The TV show is filmed in front of a live audience, who view the action in the arena through tough Lexan safety screens. The audience are encouraged to behave in the manner of spectators at a Roman gladiatorial contest, waving banners supporting particular teams, and calling "pit!, pit!, pit!..." when a house robot has totally disabled a competitor and appeals to the audience for the final verdict as to its fate.

In 2002, Nickelodeon had a kids version of Robot Wars, hosted by Dave Aizer.

A Robot Wars spoof has featured in two episodes of The Simpsons under the name Robot Rumble:, "Bart vs. Lisa vs. The Third Grade" (Season 14) and "I, D'oh-Bot" (Season 15), where Homer Simpson tried to build a robot for the show. It also featured in an episode of the Channel 4 series Spaced.


The robots
The competition which forms most of the televised part of Robot Wars is the heavyweight class, with a maximum all-up weight of 100kg (this was increased from 80kg after the first three series). The rules allow electric or liquid-fuel power (though in the latter case fuel carried is strictly limited to five minutes running time), and permits any weapons that remain attached to the main vehicle (i.e. untethered projectiles, flame throwers, and water cannons are banned).

Most of the machines are not true robots by the scientific definition, because they are not autonomous. They are remotely controlled by their teams, so could be more properly referred to as Remote Operated Vehicles (ROVs). However, the TV show has influenced the general public in the UK to such a point that if you were to say "I'm building a robot" the likely response will be "Like on Robot Wars?". Remote control is not a requirement however - autonomous robots are allowed to compete.


Types of robot
In the first series, and to a lesser extent the second series, competitors' robots were very diverse, with all sorts of untried designs being put forward. After a while competitors designs tended to converge to a few established successful designs. In later series, it was often the same teams and robots that ended up reaching the final stages of the contest. Successful design types include:

Wedges with flippers - can get under an opponent and flip them over. Chaos 2, the only two-time champion, is one of the most well-known and most powerful of these types, possessing a carbon dioxide powered front flipper that can literally throw other robots out of the arena. In the UK series, however, it was Cassius, an evolution of the first-series robot Recyclops that pioneered the power of a flipper and its 'self-righting' capabilities. The most recent development of this design is the Dutch robot Gravity, with flipping power far exceededing that of the retired Chaos 2. The flipper on Gravity has a lifting force of around four tonnes. 
Invertible flat boxes - are immune to being inverted by wedges. Weaponry varies; often a cutting disk is used. The most notable of these is past champion Tornado. In many cases, these robots do not rely on their weapons but rather on their ability to push opponents into the arena pit or to repeatedly slam them against the arena wall until they break. 
Axes: Axe-based robots attempt to damage opponents by swinging sharp objects into them. Stinger and Sump Thing use an axe powered only by the drive motors, applying reverse drive in order to swing the body around in order to attack. Other designs use pneumatic power to drive axes. The most successful current designs use a pneumatic cylinder to move a rack which turns a gear on which an axe head is mounted. TerrorHurtz and Thor are examples of this type. Behemoth uses a similar transmission, using a pneumatic cylinder to pull a chain which turns a sprocket on which an axe is mounted. Despite the success of axe-robots like Dominator 2 and TerrorHurtz, a machine armed with an axe never won the competition. 
Jaws - can enclose a competitor and crush/pierce it. This requires enormous force and there have been few successful designs. A notable exception is former UK and World champion Razer, which once did devastating damage to the house robot Matilda with its hydraulic pincer. (At the end of the show in which this happened, there was a brief voiceover [which said, in a rather mournful voice, "Matilda, created at the dawn of Robot Wars, RIP - "Rust In Peace". DIA - "Destroyed in Action".], suggesting that Matilda had been destroyed beyond repair, but then the tone changed, the voiceover said "DYWB, Do Ya Wanna Bet?", the sad music stopped, and the robot was subsequently shown to be in good repair, albeit heavily 'bandaged'.) The Dutch machine Tough As Nails is a new kind of jaw wielding heavyweight. The whole body is a horizontal claw with 2 big wheels attached. The exerted force is not that great, with 1.2 tons at the jaw tips, but it is a very fast acting weapon, running on high pressure CO2 gas rather than hydraulics. On the UK live robot circuit, Kan-Opener is probably the most powerful crushing robot, having gone undefeated in the Annihilator competition. Both Kan-Opener and Tough As Nails are invertible. 
Stored energy weapons - heavy flywheels spun up to speed by electric motors or internal combustion engines have proved very successful in causing damage. The first UK robot to fully demonstrate the power of such a weapon was Hypno-disc, which literally tore apart some of its earlier opponents, and even knocked the armored skirting off of Matilda once. In the US the full-body spinning robot Blendo was deemed too dangerous to take part in the early competitions, which lacked adequate barriers between the robots and the audience. Typhoon 2 is the UK pinnacle of this design, having won the final series of UK Robot Wars. It used its whole spinning chassis as a weapon and was capable of tearing the sides from the arena. This type of weaponry is often banned at live events, simply because there are few arenas in the UK which can contain them without risking the audience's safety. 
All championship winning designs have rolled on wheels rather than maneuvering on tank-style treads or walking on mechanical legs. Tracked and walking robots require more advanced building capabilities and are generally heavier, bulkier, and more fragile. Walking robots are given an additional weight allotment to help compensate for the design difficulties, but tracked robots are not. An all-terain environment would offer a tracked or walking robot some advantages, but most robotic combat is held on a smooth, flat arena where wheeled robots are more appropriate.

Also permitted were "Cluster Bots", which started out as one robot and could split into two or even three smaller robots during the fight itself. They did however have to be capable of splitting and joining back up without human intervention and had to start each fight as "one". There was no extra weight allowance for Cluster Bots however so the dilemma was out-numbering your opponent but with smaller robots that on their own can't really compete with the larger one. One robot that was known as a good cluster bot was Gemini, which split into two, with each half possessing a CO2-based lifter not too dissimilar from Chaos 2. It enjoyed some success but ultimately unless the two were both functioning well and working in tandem would often come up short against any half decent single heavyweight. Rules governing when a Cluster Bot was "out" changed throughout the series of Robot Wars. Sometimes all sub-bots would have to be eliminated, sometimes just one. Eventually they decided it had to be the "majority" in terms of either number (2 out of 3 parts) or weight (e.g. the heavier robot from the later Cluster Bot Typhoon Thunder, made by the creators of Typhoon 2).


The competition
There are a variety of games played, though the main knockout arena game is the most popular. Other games have included obstacle courses, robot football, and tug of war. In some games, including the main arena game, there are additional "house robots" who patrol certain areas of the arena. If a robot enters those zones, the house robots are permitted to join in and add to the general chaos.

There are other hazards in the arena, the most popular being "the pit", (known in earlier series as "The Pit of Oblivion") a hole in the floor into which a robot may fall and become trapped, unable to get out (in later series, the pit could be opened by any robot activating a 'switch' on the arena wall, which was really a tyre painted yellow. In one series there was an actual switch, as the tyre was constantly getting knocked off the wall). There is also a powerful flipper which can fling a robot across the arena, retracting spikes, flame torches and cutting wheels built into the arena sidewalls. In two series there was a spinning panel on the floor, also activated by a switch/tyre, known as "The Disc of Doom". However, this was soon removed from the arena again, as the competitors hardly ever used it, and wedge robots were getting their front ends stuck under the panel at the start of fights. Finally, in the final three series there was "The Drop Zone", a large "X" on the floor, where beaten robots were placed by a house robot or opponent, and after a countdown from 10 to 1 by the audience, a very heavy object (for example, a TV, an ocean buoy, or most commonly, a washing machine) was dropped on top of them in a rather cartoony fashion.

The house robots are not bound by the same rules as the competitors, and are generally much larger and heavier, as well as being professionally built. The number of house robots in the arena varied in each series - 4 in Series 1, 6 in Series 2, 5 in Series 3, 6 in Series 4 & 5, 8 in Series 6, 9 in Series 7, and in the spin-off show, Robot Wars Extreme, where various other competitions and random battles were contested, there were 6 in the first series, and 8 in the second. (Ditto the American show, Robot Wars: Extreme Warriors, hosted by pro wrestler Mick Foley.) The five 'main' house robots; that is, the most well-known ones, are Shunt, Matilda, Dead Metal, Sergeant Bash, and Sir Killalot. There was also The Sentinel, a giant robotic arm which impeded contestants' progress in the Gauntlet game in Series 2. In Series 4, the Refbot was added, to ensure fair play in the arena, and to provide extra camera footage from the heat of battle. Although initially criticised for always 'getting in the way' of fights, he was more or less accepted by the time Robot Wars Extreme got under way the following year, when he was given the ability to give out yellow and red 'cards' to offending contestant, and more often than not, house robots, (red cards meaning the house robot was forbidden to take part for the remainder of the battle, even when a robot was being destroyed in the normal way by their fellow house robots) and 'count out' defeated robots as if in a boxing match.

In Series 6, a new pair of house robots were built, named Mr. Psycho and Growler. They were very well received, and in Series 7, a further robot joined the group, a boxing robot named Cassius Chrome (nicknamed "Hammered Ali").

In general the winner is the last robot still functioning. In the event of a tie or disputed outcome, there is a panel of adjudicators who judge based on "style, control, damage, and aggression".

The Dutch series- made by Mentorn, on the request of BNN - 1 and 2 took place alongside the UK series 5 and 6. For series 7 several Dutch and 1 Belgian entry entered the main UK competition, with mixed success.

The UK TV series Robot Wars has now drawn to a close, however, robot builders in the UK have been taking part in competitions independent of Robot Wars for several years and the community is expanding. Combat events are organised across the UK on at least a monthly basis, usually bi-weekly. The Netherlands are also active, but with less frequency.

There is an active group of roboteers in Brazil, but at the moment not much is known.

The Fighting Robot Association (FRA) is the most prominent body in the UK at the moment.