Robot Combat League

Note: This article is not about the 2013 TV show of the same name.

The Robot Combat League is a non-profit whose mission is to promote STEM and design and fabrication skills through the exciting sport of Robot Combat.

How RCL works

Robot Combat League is a national robot competition federation, not an official organizing body for Robot Combat. Launched in March 2022, it draws competitors from local events in the USA to participate at a national level. Although most local events in the League use the SPARC rule set or some variant, every event participating in the league is independent and can run their event as they see fit, so long as they fit into a very broad set of guidelines and agree to use the League event results tracking system that will help determine which bots are the top competitors in the USA. Highly ranked bots will be considered candidates for the annual Robot Combat League competition.

Qualifying weight classes

As of 2022, ranks are calculated for the most popular weight classes: 150g, 1lb, 1lb Plastic, 3lb, 12lb, 30lb, and 30lb Sportsman robots. If more weight classes become popular and events want to include them in the League, the ranked classes may be expanded.

Determining points and rankings

Robots earn points by how highly they place at events they participate in. A robot's season total is taken from their top 3 - highest point events, provided there are at least 5 competitors in the same weight class competing.

Points are determined by how well a robot places in a competition, and is weighted by the number of robots competing. The exact calculations to determine a robots score can be viewed on this calculator.

League season

The season starts the first day of March and ends on the last day of February. Competitions in this time period are considered qualifiers for the next event. With the 2022 season being the first, adjustments to the season dates may be made if needed. Event data prior to March 2022 isn't complete, so take historical rankings with a grain of salt.

Competition history

2023

The first season consisted of 98 local events and ran from March, 2022 to February, 2023. The Robot Combat League National Championship first competition took place May, 2023 in Seattle, Washington. Since an appropriate arena was not available for this event, 30lb destructive bots did not compete in 2023.

2024

Challengers for the April, 2024 National Championship in San Jose, California were drawn from 126 qualifying events. This event was co-located with Robogames, a prominent west coast convention and series, and 30lb full-combat bots were added.

2025

The next championship is anticipated to be in Orange County, California in May, 2025.

Why the Robot Combat League doesn't use the SPARC Botrank system

Although the old Botrank system made an attempt at tracking how well robots performed, their system had several shortcomings.

Botrank scores were greatly influenced by the number of events a bot has competed in; bots that competed a lot were favored over those that placed highly in events. This led to situations where a bot that competed and performed 'OK' in a half dozen events would be ranked higher than a robot that competed in and won two events.
Forfeits in events were found to be inconsistently reported, leading to errors in ranking.
Botrank rankings were adjusted based on an 18-month rolling time period. While this captures recent performance well, having a moving period where rankings would be set made calculations of seasonal rank difficult to evaluate.
Botrank didn't have a way to disambiguate robots with the same name. Common robot names like 'Hazard' made the results unreliable.