Robots battle each other at San Mateo County Fairgrounds

SAN MATEO — It was a Who’s Who of who-wants-a-piece-of-me robotic crazies.

The Ragin’ Scotsman came over to the Peninsula from Piedmont, all 220 pounds of him in all his flame-throwing glory, to kick some robot butt. Vlad the Impaler II dropped in from Mill Valley to wield his heavy-metal lifter arm on some pathetic tin can of an opponent. And, of course, there was Original Sin, two-time defending champion of the ComBots Cup, ready to take on any challengers at this weekend’s seventh annual robot-fighting competition.

“Most of these guys know each other, and it’s like a family reunion,” said Simone Davalos, who runs the show with David Calkins, a former judge on the Comedy Central show BattleBots, which went off the air in 2002. “But it’s a family reunion where robots get badly hurt, and there’s massive amounts of destruction.”

But massive amounts of love, too. As they were setting up for Saturday’s show, which continues Sunday afternoon at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds, Davolos said contestants coming from as far away as Florida are as much about mutual support as they are mutual destruction.

“If your opponent taps you with their 50-pound tool-steel blade and you get knocked into next week and can’t operate at all, you’re counted out in 10 seconds,” she said. “But often your biggest enemy in the ring will be helping you rebuild your robot minutes later, so you can get up and running again to do more battle.”

Saturday’s battle drew several hundred spectators who watched dueling robots from about 30 teams, ranging from young kids from Marin County to engineering students from L.A. to grizzled old-timers like Hardcore Robotics from Folsom.

“Their stuff is frightening,” said 24-year-old Miles Kodama, gazing in dread across the staging area at the Hardcore dudes and their robot-killing baby called Last Rites. “Luckily we won’t be facing them today.”

That’s not to say the event would be a cakewalk for Kodama and his Team Tiki from Laney College in Oakland.

“Our first fight is with those guys over there,” Kodama said. “Their robot’s called V for Victory. And because he has a spinning bar in front like ours does, it’ll be pretty ugly for both of us today. We’ll probably kill each other.”

With the crowd settled into bleachers on three sides of the specially constructed arena, completely sealed in with a transparent plastic barrier that can stop a speeding bullet, the first rival robots were rolled onto the wood floor. The rules are simple: a double-elimination tournament, with a chance to do triage and fight one more time after being knocked out; a three-minute match; and a judge who in the event of a robot not completely destroying its opponent can decide the winner, based on two factors: damage and aggression.

And then the countdown — five, four, three, two, one — and Gruff and Great Pumpkin were off and rolling. In no time, Gruff had wowed the crowd and made his University of South Florida makers proud by violently shoving Pumpkin against a side railing where it was promptly stuck like glue, unable to fight at all.

And just to make sure everyone saw the cool thing he’d just done, Gruff slammed his huge metal arm down against the floor in a sort of reverse victory fist pump.

More fights followed, filled with billowing flames and sparks, monstrous steel wedges and spinning blades that would quickly slice and dice another robot with weed-whacking poetry in motion.

“This has been pretty cool so far,” said Finnegan Fossel, 12, who had come down from Marin County with his friend Hawke Lenihan, 11.

“I’ve never built anything big,” Finnegan said. “But I’ve done some soldering on little projects. And someday I’d love to build a robot and bring it back here to fight.”

Contact Patrick May at 408-920-5689 or follow him at Twitter.com/patmaymerc