Saskatoon robotics club lets audience take fighting robots for a spin

More than five years ago, 16-year-old Rachel Walde saw a robot fighting event and has been hooked ever since.

“I saw it and I thought it was really awesome with all the sparks and bots flying everywhere,” she said.

Walde is now part of the Saskatoon Combat Robotics Club (SCRC).

SCRC usually hosts combat competitions, but this weekend they let their audience take the robots out for a spin in exhibition matches for Kilobots 38 at Centre Mall.

The local robotics club started as a university group 15 years ago and has grown to more than 30 members.

“We’re really trying to get our name out there right now and get the audience to have a feel for what’s going on here. We want the audience to see the bots and want to join,” Walde said.

Kilobots are miniature radio-controlled fighting robots. There are three different weight classes: 150 grams, one pound and three pounds. Many fighting robots are armed with weapons like spikes, flipping arms and spinning saws.

“You try your best to knock the other opponent either out of the ring or entirely disable them so that they can’t continue,” SCRC member James Cooper said.

Starter kits cost around $300 and more complicated bots can cost as much as $1,000.

“It sounds like, ‘oh jeez, you destroyed this expensive robot.’ In reality, a lot of the times you’re not breaking all that much. It might be $30, $50 worth of parts you have to repair each time. A lot of times, it just means take a hammer to it and bend it back into shape,” Cooper said.

“You build something, and it sits on the shelf. In this kind of thing, you get to build something and get to do something with it. You get to have fun with the others competing in the events and it allows you to do something fun with the things you’ve created,” Cooper said.