First of all, I believe robot sumo's been around for a while, so it's not really "popping up."

I hadn't watched BattleBots (I don't get cable) until Spring Break this year. I was sort of disappointed. As Steve's pointed out, they're mostly overgrown R/C cars. The action didn't seem that great, and I don't think they focused enough on the technical aspect. I don't think their ratings would suffer very much if they would have short parts where they interviewed the creators about the technical parts of their robots.

At about the same time, I saw my first (and hopefully last) episode of Robotica. Robotica seems to consist of three challenges, a little race sort of thing where the robots bump into each other occasionally, a pretty simple obstacle course, and then a little fight part at the end. All while the moron announcer tries to make a big deal about it. I wasn't impressed at all.

I think that robotics fighting competitions (when done right) have, can, and will promote the field of robotics. I actually think that autonomous robot sumo is a very good idea. You have to get data from sensors, process that data into action, and then depend on your mechanical design to defeat your opponent. And the action isn't too violent either, (from what I've seen at least), you're mostly pushing the other robot, rather than smashing and whacking like BattleBots.

Seems I remember a while back seeing a show about the Autonomous Aerial Robotics Competition where Alan Alda was the star. Although Alan isn't my favorite person, I really enjoyed the show and wish they had more shows like it. I could do without just about all RC competitions like battlebots. Seeing it once a year is just about enough. I sort of could get into Robot Wars on a monthly basis. Junk Yard wars, is something completely different (no robots at all) and I could watch that just about non-stop!