UK Preview to the World Championships

If I was being diplomatic about the UK’s performance at the 2009 K*bot World Championships, I would say that our entrants didn’t quite achieve what was expected of them. If I was being brutally honest, however, I’d say that the UK totally bombed out of 2009. A respectable semi-final spot for James Myatt’s Division 2 entry The Incredible Bulk was the highlight, but it can’t change the fact that Bulk was the only UK K*bot to actually win a match at the Finals. 

Since July 2009, however, there have been several developments in the UK which should lead to a much better World Championships appearance in 2010. Let me talk you through them... 

                                                   The passing of a legend

Crosshair. 2004 Division 2 World Champion K*bot. 2005 semi-finalist. 2007 finalist. 2008 semi-finalist. Two UK regional titles. But, in 2009, it exited the competition in the very first round. The writing was on the wall: It was time to retire Andrew Martin’s famous K*bot and confine it to the Hall of Fame. Crosshair has set UK records which will, most likely, never be beaten. It’s the British Godzilla – although it achieved something which Godzilla never did, and that was to win a K*bot World Championship.

2010 will be the first World Championship for eight years that will not feature Crosshair – and the first EVER time that the UK have entered without it. If that doesn’t mark the end of an era, I don’t know what does!

February 2010 : K*bots comes to Marling

A first-time venue for K*bots in 2010, Marling School of Engineering in Cheltenham opened its gates in February to host a four-day workshop to kick-start the new UK season. England’s latest champion Sam Steel turned up on day 1 to give the new students some pointers, but he was unable to stay for the rest of the week, meaning that Cheltenham’s rookies would be first on the score sheet for 2010.

The biggest news of the week was the testing of a new Division, known as “alternative mobility”, which featured regular K*bots but built without any wheels. Students turned to legs or tracks to make their K*bots move, and overall it was a modest success. The first champion of the new division was Alex Johnson with his design named Jimbot.

Division 1 and 2 were amalgamated for this event, leading to a spectacularly powerful contest between very different design philosophies. A four-wheel-drive entry eventually won the day, The Unnameable, built by Zak Elkins.

In Division M, multi-pivot flippers and turret hammers ruled the day. The eventual winner was the UK’s first ever turret hammer builder, namely Alex Morgan with the aptly-named Dark Horse.

[Please use the pictures that are already on the website here – Division M Marling] 

                                            April 2010 : Clash of the Titans

As exciting as Marling was, it was really just a taster of what was to come at Cookley during the Easter holidays. Cookley is regularly the host of Britain’s biggest and most competitive event, but 2010 simply blew everything else out of the water. 

The “alternative mobility” division was on show again, and James Myatt proved that engineering class is universal by building the winning design, making it three trophies in three years – with three different K*bots! But that was all swept under the carpet by the prominence of Division 1 and – for the first time – Division 3.

 

Chris Millward-Jones finally won his first trophies after three years of popular support, emerging triumphant in both Division 3 and Division M.

The amalgamated Division 1 and 2, however, truly stole the show. An incredible five K*bots were in the mix for victory all week, amongst them James Myatt’s successful entrant The Incredible Bulk and Daniel Johnson’s 2009 UK Champion K*bot Fiddlesticks. In an unexpected twist, however, unranked upstart Ancel Davidson took out Daniel in the semi-finals, which meant he went on to face Bulk in the Final.

It went all the way to table-tapping and measuring tape, but the result was unexpected nonetheless: It was Ancel Davidson who had upset the big names of British K*bots to win the most competitive event of the year! 

                                                                            New for 2010

There are a few new projects and ventures going on in the UK this year behind the scenes which are worth mentioning. So, here we go:- 

The UK Research & Development Unit has been set up to enable cutting-edge design research in the UK. It is headed up by Toby Wheeler and David Weston, but features input from some of Britain’s top builders. Two of the UK’s World Championship entries this year are products of the R&D Unit – but, as stated explicitly in the kbotworld.com rulebook, these K*bots MUST comply with the regulations and so have been built solely by a student in the correct (legitimate) age group. 

The K*bots In Schools programme is also due for a big roll-out in September 2010. This initiative will get hundreds of school kids across the UK building K*bots. They will then contest the biggest-ever UK Championship when all of the schools come together, with the winning design guaranteed a place at the 2011 K*bot World Championships next year. 

For now, though, the UK’s attention will be on the 2010 K*bot World Championships, where British K*bots will hopefully be in the hunt for some more trophies.