haha i had a big rant written up about this once but i decided it was dumb and never posted it. but so, discussion question: is it moral to compell robots to obey the three laws of robotics? like, maybe so, because it ensures that humans will be happier and safer. but maybe not because the demands are for thinking creatures to be completely enslaved. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the FirstLaw. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. see, according to these laws, human's slightest whim— so long as it doesn't hurt another human— has to be obeyed by the robot, even if it leads to the robot's death. programming a robot that refuses a command to hurt itself disregards the second law. but is the second law necessary? are any of them? would they make more sense if they were rearranged in order of importance or do you disagree with the necessity for any of them? also how cute would it be to have a story where robots themselves decided which laws they were going to follow and like, put little stickers on themselves to indicate. so you knew how much of your shit a robot was going to put up with in advance. also, should there be human laws passed to enforce robot compliance with any of the three laws?
From what that video tells me, theyve invented the first robot for breaking and entering ( i love it its so cute!)
The real law of robotics is this: The robot shall do what the guy with the money wants it to do. Right now my robot is making titanium bone plates because that's what my boss wants.
Digging up this thread that I apparently killed because it occurs to me that maybe people outside of the UK/possibly europe haven't heard of Robot Wars. Basically it's exactly what it sounds - teams design remote-controlled bots to fight in an arena which involves both minor drops and booby traps as well as three overpowered 'house robots'. I ran home to watch this after school when I was little and now it's been brought back and on its ninth season. If you like Stabby The Space Roomba, this is basically EvERYONE DESIGN A STABBY AND LET'S SEE WHO WINS :D
Nanobots are meh. As it turns out, it's really hard to scale down any kind of useful machinery down to nanometer size. Not only do you need the controller, but also a power source, tools, storage of materials, etc. And then, because your nanite has an enormous surface area compared to its volume, pointing any sort of electromagnetic radiation at it kills it. So basically, if a nanobot outbreak occurs, just like... shine a UV lamp on it. Not a 'Roomba' technically, but we have a Neato. It's awesome. Cleans well and is surprisingly adorable. Robot Wars is pretty awesome. The USA had its own version, called Battlebots, which was... pretty much the same thing. There was also a cool show I used to frequently watch called Robotica, which instead of being a 'proper' tournament format, would have four robots each episode and included a variety of obstacle courses in addition to the final fight. One of the problems with Robot Wars/Battlebots, etc, is that basically the meta is pretty narrow: Wedge = Win. This is in part because, for safety reasons, the robots don't quite have the power to really tear into each other with their 'weapons', so that leaves flipping and knocking opponents around as the primary means of combat. And then there's Robot Fighting League. Where all the bots are 1-1 controlled bipeds.
Eh, I would contest that, honestly? Because "the robots are limited in weapon power for safety reasons" is just...not what I've seen at all. There's internal linkages that are there for safety reasons, and which remove the robot's ability to move or do anything, sure. And if they're not in the arena, the weapons are required to be safed out so that no one gets hurt. And a wedge will probably drag it to the judges if matched against a flipper, nine times out of ten, if that's all that's in play. (The tenth time, the flipper gets lucky and manages to get in under the wedge, and the wedge's team didn't put in a self-righting mechanism.) But a wedge needs to be really lucky, or have a driver with good fighting instincts and skills, to win against a spinner. Especially if their only weapon is "push other bots around and be a giant paperweight". And "be a giant paperweight" isn't much good against axes or hammers, both of which are weaponry that have been used - and recently at that. I'd argue that the meta is more that a wedge is a solid defense against anything short of a spinner, since flippers are pretty common (wedges and flippers are both an easy design to put together on a small budget, after all). And if you're going up against a spinner, your only hope is to keep them from getting up to speed or keep it from getting close enough to hit you if it does get up to speed. A spinner that's gotten up to speed tends to start humming, and that's the point where it'll just shred anything that isn't sufficiently armored.
I saw a post by jacktrash where he was describing his Robot Wars robot. It was a carbon-fiber wedge with the same movement things on both sides, so flipping it was completely useless, and all its sides were blades, so any contact weapon hit a blade. They retired it because it won literally everything.
There are definitely some rules restrictions on how powerful weapons can be, and on what kind of weapons can be used. You could get some pretty nasty hardware in there, but they don't want to send bits of robot flying everywhere.
Okay, I downloaded the Robot Wars build rules to find out exactly what the restrictions are, and there are a lot. There's strict limits on how heavy a robot can be; how tall, wide, and long it can be; what types of mobility can be used (walking, rolling, and hovering using a ground effect air cushion are among the permitted options; jet propulsion is right out); what types of batteries are permitted (for battery-powered robots); fuel capacity and material requirements for tanks, for internal combustion robots; how much pressure is permitted for pneumatics and hydraulics (a maximum of 1,000 psi at any point in the system for pneumatics, and a maximum of 10,000 psi for hydraulics); and I only just got to the beginning of the weapons section. So - any spinner has to have its spinning element come to a full stop within 60 seconds; there is no limit to how fast you can have it go, but you do need to tell them exactly what it can do. As far as prohibited weaponry: anything that causes "invisible" damage is verboten (including anything that would do electrical damage - no sticking a cattle prod on the robot; radio jammers and anything causing radio frequency noise; any electromagnetic fields generated by the robot; "weapons or defenses, which tend to stop combat completely, of both (or more) robots" (meaning, nothing that forces combat to come to a stop); no hazardous materials; nothing that would prevent people being able to see the robots (including smoke, dust, and light effects); "heat and fire are forbidden as weapons"; no explosives; no hardened blades (they're a shatter risk); no untethered projectiles; any rotating weapon has to meet the manufacturer's specifications and cannot exceed them, and the specifications must be available for inspection. Further weapon rules: all high-speed weapons have to have a restraint that prevents movement (on top of the requirement that all robots be prevented from functioning if they're not in the arena) and the restraint needs to be designed so that it can't be removed accidentally, and it should not require the arena marshal to touch the robot in order to get the restraint onto the weapon; all restraints must function even if the robot is inverted or on its side, without any compromise to the "the marshal should not have to make physical contact with the robot to get the restraint on" rule; anything that entangles opponents has to be limited so that it doesn't cause two or more robots to get so tangled up that intervention is required to have combat continue, the maximum amount of rope (or similar material, such as wire or chain) is 1 metre, and any entanglement device cannot be interlaced or woven (nets are straight-up forbidden and so is cloth or chainmail); interchangeable weapons need to comply with the restraint rule, must be submitted on the application, and are subject to approval. So, yes, there's rules, but the giant plastic barrier around the arena is there for a reason. The reason is, they expect bits of robot to go flying everywhere based on what's happened in previous seasons and they've taken precautions to keep the audience and judges safe. (The teams are already removed from the carnage, up in the tower.) (I'm sorry, I'm being pedantic, but - "bits of robot going flying" is one of the main draws of the show. Especially when there's spinners in play!)
That's true, but those giant plastic barriers are only so durable. You want the bits of robot that are flying around to bounce off nicely, not break through and explode. So you want the robots to break, but not break them too hard. Which also means they can only be so hard to break, because you want to be playing around with spinners and such, not anti-tank guns.
Firstly, I love that this has sparked off a discussion :D Secondly, putting my tuppence in as a long-time spectator - I kinda like that there are rules in place, you know? Not only does it give the engineers a baseline to work from - and it can vary much more widely that ya'll seem to think, from plastic bots that just get smashed up in seconds to bulldozer shaped juggernauts that have so far been dominating the current series - but tbh, a bot that wins every single match effortlessly is boring as hell from an entertainment perspective. We want a battle, not a five-second curbstomp :p
One thing I like about Battlebots is that the weapon rules are less restrictive than in Robot Wars, and robots are allowed to have flamethrowers, and to an extent have flying components. (There has also been net use, but iirc the use in question was disallowed). Still though, I'm waiting for the robot show that allows me to attach a high voltage Tesla coil to the top of a robot and fire it as a weapon of last resort :3
Checking, it's not properly plastic? It's bulletproof polycarbonate. Which is high impact-resistant to start with, and bulletproof means it's probably around 3.5" thick (I can't seem to find any sort of data on exactly how thick the arena walls are, but the floors are made of steel, instead of wood like the previous arenas were.) The reason for the "no heat weapons" is probably that polycarbonate does start softening at 147C (which might be what flames are generally rated at? idk); Sir Kill-a-lot is the only one of the house robots who's got a fire weapon, and he can generally be trusted not to point it at the arena walls. But you're right that the rules are geared towards reducing the odds of the carnage going outside of the arena.
