Roboteers from across the UK descended on Kommune for a day of Robot Wars-style robot combat on Saturday.
Competing robots were equipped with a variety of different weapons, such as flippers, hammers, and spinning blades, with the aim of either incapacitating the other robots or causing the opposing team to ‘tap out’, and concede the fight.
Gus Collier, who runs SCAR (Steel City Antweight Robots), the organisation behind the competition, said: “Sheffield is certainly the gem of the north for robot fighting events.”
Mr Collier said: “What’s really driving up at the minute is the amount of audience that we’re getting. People are watching and bringing their kids. We’re seeing new people all the time – new faces coming in with their robots, whether it’s professional engineers or a parent and child who are just giving it a go.
“People are coming from as far as Bristol or the far reaches of Scotland to fight here.”
Unlike the televised competition, in which the robots could weigh well over 100kg and be expensive and time-consuming to build, Saturday’s event was restricted to a maximum weight of 1.5kg, making the competition more accessible to roboteers from all walks of life.
Dylan Stanley, one of the roboteers competing in the tournament, told Sheffield Wire: “My son started watching old Robot Wars on Dave with his grandfather, and came back and said ‘Can we do it?’
“At the time, I thought our only option was to do the large robots – the 150 kilo ones that are £20,000, so I said no, we can’t do it, it’s too expensive. But he kept going on, so I found you can start with the smaller ones – so we built a couple!”
In the end, despite a closely fought final, the competition was won by Ice Breaker, a robot whose devastating vertical spinner made light work of the competition.
