Before it became a big thing on TV and stuff, I went to a couple of these yearly competitions around the States... It's been so long, though... I can't even remember which tournament it was! I want to say Robot Wars, but I think that's just a TV show, and this definitely wasn't TV. I always wanted to compete, but never had the time or money. When I was very little, my godfather would buy those robot kits, like the ones made by OWI, and then put them together and give them to me. Later, when I started to learn about electronics and programming in middle school, I hacked those old kits. I never had much success, though, beyond exchanging sensors between the chassis and simple things like that.
Now that I'm a comp. sci. major I really want to take some time to tinker - and I could get credit for it! It's cool to hear that there's still interest in amatuer robotics, now that the fad is dying down. What kind of hardware are you using? Are you going remote or autonomous? What's your strategy? (If it's not a secret.) Battling isn't so much my thing anymore - I'm really more interested in self-replicating machines, cooperative autonomy and automatic programming - but it certainly is at the center of innovation in the field. The thought of military automatons just kind of scares me, especially with the recent advances in bipedal locomotion at Sony and Honda, and all the other new whizbangs that they're coming out with. Sometimes I think I should put robots on hold and build myself a microwave gun.
~Joe