Gearheads: The Turbulent Rise of Robotic Sports (Original)

by Brad Stone

Book Overview

In the early nineties, a visionary special-effects guru named Marc Thorpe conjured a field of dreams different from any the world had seen before: It would be framed by unbreakable plastic instead of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743229517
• ISBN13: 9780743229517
• Release Date: March 2003
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Rock 'em, Sock 'em Robots. And Litigants.

We celebrate athletes of strength, agility, and skill. We do not celebrate nerds, who not only do not win, but do not compete. As the twentieth century was closing, though, nerds who had a special fascination for electromechanical gadgets had a previously impossible sport in which to show creativity, cunning, and a killer instinct. "Gearheads" these particular nerds were called, and their games were played under the names of "Robot Wars," "Battlebots," "Robotica" and others. While it remains to be seen if this revolutionary form of competition will be long-lasting, the sport has had a colorful beginning and plenty of people interested in it as spectacle. _Gearheads: The Turbulent Rise of Robotic Sports_ (Simon & Schuster) by Brad Stone is a funny, sad, and weird account of how these metal crunching monsters compete, and how greed and litigation ruins dreams.It is important to realize that the robots described herein are not necessarily machines that we would think of as robots. The gearheads' robots are manipulated by a controller in the same way that hobbyists operate radio controlled cars. But for competition, RC Car Joust didn't sound nearly as good as Robot Wars, and so the inventor of this competition, Marc Thorpe, expanded the definition. He was interested in starting a commercial venture that would give his family a sound future, and had been intrigued with machines that did performance art and some primitive mechanical jousting. Unfortunately for Thorpe, he had to find a backer. His partner, Steve Plotnicki, surely had the money; he was a record executive who had been responsible for such acts as the seminal rappers Run DMC. The eager but naïve Thorpe didn't check much into Plotnicki's record, which included vituperative litigation against his former stars. _Gearheads_ is largely about the legal battles that followed, and they are as vicious as any of the buzz saw, pneumatic ram, and knife battles that took place in the Robot Wars ring. The legal battles are long, and sad, but more entertaining are the description of the gearheads themselves, and the way they participated in a hobby that turned into an obsession for many of them. One of them says, "The thrill is hard to describe. It's better than fishing, a whole lot better than baseball. It's fighting and it's not fighting. It's just boys at play." Along the way, Stone describes the decades of violent and very noisy, not to mention illegal, robotic performance art spectacles arranged by Mark Pauline and his Survival Research Laboratories. Pauline was much more interested in the dadaism of destruction (and troublemaking in general) than in rule-bound competition. Also here are Woody Flowers, the MIT teaching genius who teamed up with Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, to start FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), robot competition for high schoolers that stressed cooperation as much as competition (and thereby seems to have lost much o

great read

Great, quick, fascinating read.I was expecting a story about the niche of robot wars. But this book turned out to have a broader scope, detailing a compelling story about the culture and business behind the world of entertainment. The book has several vivid characters who seem to lose all perspective in their passion to get a piece of the action when robot battles start to take off. What's cool about that is that Stone has witnessed this from the inception of a new entertainment phenomenon. But I was left wondering if there are some universal truths here about the greed that attends entertainment dealings. But I also didn't feel like the book shoved its point of view down my throat. It drew me in, told me a story, and laid out a lot information, but let me reach my own conclusions about who was right, and what went wrong. One bit of subtlety I particularly appreciated pertained to the media's role in this whole story. The robot makers -- and promotors of robot battles -- are consistently asked by the media if they are promoting violence through their robots. But the real battles were taking place between human beings using the courts to take control of the sport. Indirectly, it nicely showed what a red herring it can be to blame entertainment for promoting conflict, when we have so much unecessary fighting going on on the sidelines. robots don't kill people, lawyers do.

A history that needed to be told...

As a Combat Robotics competitor for the last 7 years witnessing the turmoil as this new sport gets started I found this book to be an amazingly in depth account of the events that unfolded. I thought I knew most of the history, but was amazed in many sections of how much I didnt know. More importantly I think this book has a larger relevance in that this is most likely the track that any new popular sport may take in the modern litigious world.Alexander Rose of Inertia Labs...

A great read!

This book is for anyone's who's ever had a good idea and wanted to know what it takes to make it a marketable success. Marc Thorpe's story had to be told. Learn from his mistakes how to survive the greatest challenges entrepreneurs face in launching a brilliant plan. The most violent robot imaginable is nothing compared to the players in this story. You'll be shocked to read of the depths some people will go to profit on someone else's hard work and innovation. It's an engrossing story illustrating the classic battle between greed and creativity; proving yet again that greed will always win in the short term and always lose in the long term. Robot enthusiasts will find the back story concerning the big personalities (human and robot) enthralling. As for the rest of us, like me, who never paid robots too much attention, you can't help but be drawn into the drama and human interest of this business battlefield. Excellent book.

The definitive history of robotic combat.

This book tells the tale of the birth and rise of robotic combat. From its early roots in art and the classroom to full blown TV shows and live events. It gives insight into a niche of society, a community, of builders, event promoters, and moneymen. It exposes the passion and darker side of the sport. It details the savage legal battles that are more destructive then the robots themselves. With the evolution of the sport came many growing pains and new offshot species of robots and shows and this book exposes it for all to see. As a veteran of robotic combat, I highly recommend this book to anyone who had questions about the how and why of this crazy sport. " Robot Darwinism"