| Critter Crunch | |
|---|---|
| Status | Active |
| Genre | Robotics Competition |
| Frequency | Annually |
| Venue | MileHiCon |
| Location(s) | Denver, Colorado |
| Country | USA |
| Established | 1987 |
| Sponsor | Denver Mad Scientists Club |
The Critter Crunch is a table top combat robot competition that takes place annually at the MileHiCon science fiction convention. Established in 1986 with the first competition held in 1987, it is widely accepted as the first combat robot competition. [1] [2] preceding the Robot Wars TV series by more than decade.
The competition was proposed by the Denver Mad Scientists club and organized by member Bill Llewellin. [1] In the months before the 1987 convention the club produced a set of rules which were distributed without copyright restriction, allowing other organizations use or extend them for their own competitions.
The first competition was held on a hotel table. The original rules prohibited damaging the surface. There were several competitors including a remote control dune buggy, a mechanical device under a steel mixing bowl, and a little yellow remote control Corvette that could only go forward or backwards and turn. The first competition was won by the Corvette.
The last revision to the official rules was on 15 Feb 2003. By then the rules had evolved to include mention of radio controls, attacking control systems, limiting the number of operators to one, and codifying two part critters loss conditions [3]
Worldcon, or more formally the World Science Fiction Convention, the annual convention of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS), is a science fiction convention. It has been held each year since 1939. The members of each Worldcon are the members of WSFS, and vote both to select the site of the Worldcon two years later, and to select the winners of the annual Hugo Awards, which are presented at each convention.
An autonomous robot is a robot that acts without recourse to human control. The first autonomous robots environment were known as Elmer and Elsie, which were constructed in the late 1940s by W. Grey Walter. They were the first robots in history that were programmed to "think" the way biological brains do and meant to have free will. Elmer and Elsie were often labeled as tortoises because of how they were shaped and the manner in which they moved. They were capable of phototaxis which is the movement that occurs in response to light stimulus.
BattleBots is an American robot combat television series and company. The show is an adaptation of the American Robot Wars competitions hosted in the mid–late 1990s by Marc Thorpe, in which competitors design and operate remote-controlled armed and armored machines designed to fight in an arena combat elimination tournament. The same competitions inspired the British TV program Robot Wars, which acquired the name in 1995.
Robot Wars is a robot combat competition that was broadcast on British television from 1998 to 2004 and from 2016 to 2018. Each series involves teams of amateur and professional roboteers operating their own constructed remote controlled robots to fight against each other in an arena formed of steel and bullet proof glass fitted with arena hazards and containing areas occupied by hostile and heavier "House Robots". Earlier series included assault and trial courses for competing robots.
Dragon Con is a North American multigenre convention, founded in 1987, which takes place annually over the Labor Day weekend in Atlanta, Georgia. As of 2017, the convention draws attendance of over 80,000, features hundreds of guests, encompasses five hotels in the Peachtree Center neighborhood of downtown Atlanta near Centennial Olympic Park, and runs thousands of hours of programming for fans of science fiction, fantasy, comic books, and other elements of fan culture. It is owned and operated by a private for-profit corporation, with the help of a 1,500-member volunteer staff. Dragon Con has hosted the 1990 Origins Game Fair and the 1995 North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFiC).
Hawaii Baptist Academy (HBA) is a private, co-educational, college preparatory primary and secondary Christian school that serves grades K-12 on three campuses. The school is governed by a board of directors elected by the executive board of the Hawaii Pacific Baptist Convention, an affiliate of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Robot combat is a type of robot competition in which custom-built machines fight using various methods to incapacitate each other. The machines have generally been remote-controlled vehicles rather than autonomous robots.
The Anaheim Convention Center is a major convention center in Anaheim, California and is the largest exhibition facility on the West Coast of the United States. It is located across from the Disneyland Resort on Katella Avenue. The original components, designed by Adrian Wilson & Associates and built by Del E. Webb Corporation, opened in July 1967—including a basketball arena followed shortly by the convention hall. It holds many events, like Star Wars Celebration, VidCon, BlizzCon, Anime Expo, D23 Expo, WonderCon, NAMM Show, competitions, and more. In addition to hosting various types of conventions, the Anaheim Convention Center was used to host the wrestling during the 1984 Summer Olympics.
BotCon, briefly known as "The Official Transformers Collectors' Convention", is an annual convention for Transformers fans and collectors. BotCon has been held annually since 1994. BotCon is a syllabic abbreviation for "Robot Convention" but also refers to "Autobot" and "Decepticon", the protagonist and antagonist robot factions in the many continuities in the Transformers franchise.
A robot competition is an event where the abilities and characteristics of robots may be tested and assessed. Usually they have to beat other robots in order to become the best one. Many competitions are for schools but several competitions with professional and hobbyist participants are also arising.
MileHiCon is an annual science fiction and fantasy convention held in Denver, Colorado in October. It is primarily literary, although it also has an art show, a vendors' room, Critter Crunch, Critter Float-illa, a video room, an anime room, a masquerade, gaming, a bat'leth tournament, and programming on science, writing, literary, and media. It runs its own track of child-friendly, interactive programming and also hosts the Avistrum Academy of Sorcery. It is run by MileHiCon, Inc., a Colorado not-for-profit corporation, and donates money each year to local literacy programs.
An unmanned surface vehicle, unmanned surface vessel or uncrewed surface vessel (USV), colloquially called a drone boat, drone ship or sea drone, is a boat or ship that operates on the surface of the water without a crew. USVs operate with various levels of autonomy, from remote control to fully autonomous surface vehicles (ASV).
FIRST Overdrive was the 2008 game for the FIRST Robotics Competition, announced on January 5, 2008. In it, teams competed to complete counterclockwise laps around a central barrier while manipulating large 40 in (1 m) diameter "Trackballs" over and under overpasses to score additional points.
The FIRST Championship is a four-day robotics championship held annually in April at which FIRST student robotics teams compete. For several years, the event was held at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia, but moved to the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, Missouri in 2011, where it remained through 2017. In 2017, the Championship was split into two events, being additionally held at the George R. Brown Convention Center and Minute Maid Park in Houston, Texas. In 2018 and 2019, the Championship was held in Houston and Detroit, Michigan at the TCF Center and Ford Field. The event comprises four competitions; the FIRST Robotics Competition Championship, the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship, the FIRST Lego League World Festival, and the FIRST Lego League Junior World Expo.
Hal-Con Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Comic Convention, commonly known as Hal-Con, was founded in the 1970s and revived in the 2010s. It is traditionally an annual weekend event held in Halifax, Nova Scotia in Atlantic Canada during the middle of Fall.
Diplomacy is a strategic board game created by Allan B. Calhamer in 1954 and released commercially in the United States in 1959. Its main distinctions from most board wargames are its negotiation phases and the absence of dice and other game elements that produce random effects. Set in Europe in the years leading to the First World War, Diplomacy is played by two to seven players, each controlling the armed forces of a major European power. Each player aims to move their few starting units and defeat those of others to win possession of a majority of strategic cities and provinces marked as "supply centers" on the map; these supply centers allow players who control them to produce more units. Following each round of player negotiations, each player can issue attack and support orders, which are then executed during the movement phase. A player takes control of a province when the number of provinces that are given orders to support the attacking province exceeds the number of provinces given orders to support the defending province.
Get Over It! is the robotics competition event for the 2010-11 FIRST Tech Challenge. Two teams compete to score points by depositing colored batons in various types of goals. The name of the game refers to the many obstacles that traverse the middle of the field, which include a mountain, two bridges, and two ramps.
Student Robotics is a registered charity that runs an annual robotics competition for teams of 16 to 19 year-olds. The charity aims to foster a world where engineering and artificial intelligence is accessible to young people with a stated mission "to bring the excitement of engineering and the challenge of coding to young people through robotics". The competition is free to enter and teams are provided with all of the core electronics that they need to build a robot. To encourage creative and ingenious solutions to problems, constraints on design are kept to a minimum, and the students can build and fashion their robots with any materials they choose; this results in a wide range of quirky, original robots. The robots must operate autonomously; once they are switched on to compete no interference from the team is allowed.
Magnum Opus Con (MOC) was an annual multigenre convention which generally took place each spring in various cities in the U.S. states of Georgia and South Carolina from 1986 to 2001. Organized by comics retailer Roland Castle, the convention was designed to attract science fiction fans of all stripes. Over its 16-year run, MOC featured hundreds of celebrity guests and ran hundreds of hours of programming for fans of science fiction, fantasy, comic books, gaming, and other elements of fandom.
Wales Comic Con is an annual fan convention in the United Kingdom, held in Wrexham, North Wales in 2008–2018, and from 2022. From 2019 to 2023, the main event was held in Telford, England, due to demands for a larger venue than in Wrexham, although smaller events returned to Wrexham from 2022, alongside the ones held in Telford. In December 2023, the event organisers announced the convention would no longer be held in Telford, moving to another yet to-be-named venue.