Robot Combat Sports: From Robot Wars to ABB Arms

Robot combat sports began with hobbyists driving armoured radio controlled boxes into each other, and they now include six foot humanoids swinging steel blades in a cage in San Francisco. This post starts with the small American contests of the late 1980s and the Robot Wars and BattleBots shows, then moves to the first humanoid boxing tournament in China and the blade fight the startup REK staged in October 2026. Along the way it covers the rules and safety thinking behind the sport, and where industrial arms such as ABB's fit, which is mostly outside the cage.

Two wedge shaped combat robots collide in a shower of sparks at RoboGames. Photo: Charles Haynes / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

How Robot Wars and BattleBots built a spectator sport

Two of the oldest American contests still running are Critter Crunch in Denver, founded around 1987, and Robot Battles, founded in 1991 in the southeastern United States, both run by members of the Denver Mad Scientists Society. The machines were remote controlled vehicles, and a robot lost when it was immobilised or pushed out of the arena. If time ran out, judges scored the bout, usually on control, aggression and damage, much like judges at a boxing match. Builders were mostly hobbyists, and the cost of a machine could be a few parts from a hobby shop or a serious engineering budget.

A small combat robot is flipped onto its side in the arena at Maker Faire 2007. Photo: Steve Jurvetson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

In 1994 Marc Thorpe launched the first Robot Wars competition in San Francisco. Thorpe had worked at Industrial Light and Magic on films such as The Empire Strikes Back and was then a designer at LucasToys. He ran the events until 1997. The British series Robot Wars aired on BBC Two from 20 February 1998, and added heavy "House Robots" such as Sir Killalot that attacked any competitor who strayed into their corner of the arena. Jeremy Clarkson presented the first series before Craig Charles took over.

Sir Killalot, one of the House Robots from the British Robot Wars series, on display at Makers Central in 2024. Photo: Phil Parker / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

When Thorpe lost control of the American contests, competitors Greg Munson and Trey Roski started BattleBots. Its first event took place at the Long Beach Pyramid in California in August 1999, and the series premiered on Comedy Central on 23 August 2000. It returned on ABC in 2015 and ran on Discovery from 2018 to 2023. By then the sport had settled its basic rules: weight classes with a heavyweight limit of 250 lb at BattleBots, an extra weight allowance for walking robots, a ban on gun like weapons, and arenas behind bulletproof screens.

The BattleBots Arena building in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2024. Photo: TaurusEmerald / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Humanoid boxing and blade fights in 2026

On 25 May 2025 Hangzhou hosted the CMG World Robot Competition Mecha Fighting Series, billed as the first combat event built around humanoid robots that walk on two legs. Four teams of human operators controlled Unitree G1 robots, which are 1.32 metres tall and weigh 35 kg, through three rounds of two minutes. A punch to the head or body scored one point and a kick three, a fall cost five points, and a robot that stayed down for eight seconds lost ten points and the round. Unitree said the robots threw straight punches, hooks, side kicks and spinning kicks, and got back up after falling.

Unitree humanoid robots and robot dogs on stage at the Japan Mobility Show 2025. Photo: RuinDig/Yuki Uchida / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

In San Francisco the startup REK, short for Robot Entertainment Kombat, has added weapons. The San Francisco Standard reported on 11 October 2026 that about 100 people watched two remotely piloted humanoids fight with blades in REK's arena on Van Ness Avenue, a former mattress showroom. Rektile, 6 feet 2 inches and 180 pounds, had steel claws, and the 190 pound T-REK carried blades of AR500 hardened steel. One blade pierced a camera lens through the cage. Founder Cix Liv said: "We're still a way out from autonomous fighting."

Spectators watch a robot fight through the clear walls of a combat arena at Maker Faire 2007. Photo: Bill Ward / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Industrial robots have no place in that ring. ABB arms such as the IRB 6700 and the IRB 1300 are built for welding, handling and machining inside fenced cells, and ABB's SafeMove software keeps their speed and reach within set limits. Combat organisers face a similar problem of keeping people away from moving steel, although an ABB robot is not designed to take hits. Robots that throw controlled punches at a human are a separate subject, covered in our post on the boxing sparring robot.

An ABB IRB 6700 grinding a steel part inside Teqram's EasyGrinder cell at Ancofer. Photo: ABB

Rules, safety and the next season of robot fights

REK's 18 September event, in which influencer Frankie LaPenna fought humanoid robots, drew a cease and desist letter from the California State Athletic Commission dated 23 September. It ordered REK to stop holding or promoting boxing or mixed martial arts events involving humans without the commission's approval and licensing. The letter did not ban robot against robot bouts, and Liv argued that the law covers fights between two people. Other states and countries may write their own rules on who can share a cage with a fighting machine.

Team members wheel the combat robot Apollo on a trolley at a Robot Wars recording in 2017. Photo: LukeSurl / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Inside the arena, safety is the main engineering problem. Spinner bots already need bulletproof walls, and humanoids with long steel blades can reach through viewing holes, as REK found out. Weight classes, weapon limits and kill switches are likely to spread to humanoid leagues. For factories, robot fights are a public stress test of balance control, fall recovery and teleoperation, the same skills humanoids will need on a production line. Industrial cells, by contrast, are usually planned and tested in RobotStudio before any arm moves.

An engineer programs a robot cell in RobotStudio next to an ABB industrial robot. Photo: ABB

Money is the other limit. A heavyweight wheeled robot is expensive to build and repair, and a full size humanoid costs far more. MegaBots, which staged a giant robot duel with Japan's Suidobashi Heavy Industry in 2017, ran out of money by 2019 and sold its giant robot Eagle Prime on eBay. ABB will probably stay off camera, in factories that build robot parts, while the operators who learn teleoperation for sport may bring those skills to industry. Our post on robot football shows a gentler side of robot sport.

An ABB IRB 1300 industrial robot with an operator holding the FlexPendant. Photo: ABB

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