Behind every great robot, there's a great robot design team. The backgrounds of the teams are startlingly diverse. Some are clean-cut and clad in matching T-shirts, while others are all in black army fatigues with berets, looking like evil opponents of Ralph Macchio in the Karate Kid movies hinting at their master plan of robot genocide and world domination.

Backstage has a soapbox derby/science fair feel to it. The field of participants ranges from students to professional engineers. There's even a team from NASA with their entry, Painful Wedgie, which turns out to be painful only for NASA because it's too complicated to run properly. They can put a man in space, but building an invincible robot warrior is a different story.

Mark Setrakian

The ominous Master is the brainchild of Mark Setrakian, a Hollywood special effects maven who created the bat in Batman. His creation here today looks like it could star in a movie of its own.

Andy Lyon (one of the guys behind the deadly Thor) actually builds robots for a living at Schilling Development, a robotic company.

Andy Lyon

"It's what we do every day," says Andy, who became excited about Robot Wars after seeing the thrills and spills of the '94 event. The key objective of his team was to build a machine that would get the crowd on their side.

"We knew that many key matches rested on audience approval. We had to do something to get the crowd riled up. We thought a hammer pounding something was a pretty exciting way to bash something up."

The total cost of Thor is a bit on the spendier side, somewhere in the $3000-$5000 range for materials, not to mention the $100,000 in labor.

Radically different in design and fighting philosophy is La Machine, created by a team of graphic designers at Impact Media Group who also happen to be cousins. "We're the type of kids who'd take CB radios apart to see how they work," says La Machine team driver Trey Roski.

Built for a mere $600, La Machine was actually designed on the Macintosh computer. Then tests were made to come up with the proper angle for impact and carrying of other robots. The rules were studied, arena dimensions were looked at, and La Machine arose as the ultimate warrior working within those rules.

My main question is: why must we have Robot Wars? Can't we find a way for robots to create peace? It is MAN who pits robot against robot.