I’m really not sure where to start with my RoboGames coverage – the weekend was jammed packed full of interesting people and cool things – like talking with the machinist who worked on the NPC motors many of us use in our droids, to hanging out with the Orb Swarm folks or Grant Imahara from Mythbusters, or getting some inside info from the engineer who maintains the machines that spin our aluminum domes. Artoo even got in on some battle bot action in the arena and lived to tell the tail.

The event is held at Fort Mason in San Francisco each year and attracts thousands of people from all over the world. I was in attendance all 3 days with support from my friend Richard, and Gerard was there on Saturday with his R2.

The games themselves cover everything from the traditional battle bot arena tournaments, to robot soccer and sumo fighting. There are also special categories for art and bar tending robots. Maybe next year I’ll enter Artoo into the latter. In total there were 70 different competitive categories.

Artoo was a big crowd pleaser as usual, and many photos were taken with his admiring fans. My favorite was this one I found on Flickr by inkyhack.

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I had a kick ass day at RoboGames. There’s way too many things to post about, but thought I’d throw up some photos.

The highlight has got to be getting in the arena with some of the battle bots.

R2 managed to flip this guy over using his own weapon against him

There were also a lot of cool art robots there, like this one serving beer

More photos in the gallery.

The good news is the new 3″ casters are working out great.

Big thanks to Dave and Simone for being great hosts to the group.