CEO Wants the Raspberry Pi to Power New Robot Wars Revival

Robot Wars is returning to UK television, and the Chief of the Raspberry Pi Foundation wants his company’s micro-computers to power the next generation of the show’s battle robots. Raspberry Pi Foundation CEO Eben Upton is excited by the prospect of the Robot Wars revival, heading back to BBC Two sometime this year, and he hopes the Raspberry Pi will form act as the brains in Roboteers’ new creations.

“I think it’s great news that it’s coming back. Really exciting. I hope that some of the teams will use Raspberry Pis to build their robots. Definitely!” Eben told The Inquirer.

“One of the biggest problems was that sometimes the robots had fearsome potential but couldn’t be controlled well, and often it came down to who had the best controller, not who had the best robot,” he added, proposing: “I’d like to see driverless Robot Wars. Robots that use the addition of compute to be really fierce. Yeah, autonomous Robot Wars would be great.”

Gone are the days of relying on radio frequency controllers, likely to be replaced in Robot Wars by wi-fi-connected tablets, or even smartphones, with live feeds from on-board cameras.

If you were building a battle-bot for the new series of Robot Wars, what new technological advancements would you take advantage of?