A robot needn't be autonomous.

Remote controlled just means that the robot is in line of sight.

Tele-operation occurs when you can't see the robot, from packBots to the current Mars bots.

Of course, things are much more interesting when more autonomous.

I would love to see battleBots move away from RC and towards bigger, smarter bots that could do some real damage. I'm sure most readers of this blog would. :)

Picking your point up, I've got build your own combat robot at home somewhere. Im sure theres a bit in there that said that robot wars/battlebots was once autonomous. I dont know why they changed it. Health and safety perhaps.

Robot Wars certainly did allow autonomous robots, it's just that no-one has really got very far with one. TBH the engineering challenges ae hard enough, and the teams involved needed a wide enough spread of knowledge as it is.

Making a useful combat robot that works by radio control is a hard enough challenge! However, IIRC the makers of the show were very keen on seeing an autonomous robot, in much the same way as they were encouraging towards walking robots. Well, except I suppose that walkers were allowed to weigh twice as much as wheelers.

Sheesh I really should do some work!

Clearly, there should be separate categories for autonomous and RC controlled bots.

The first few generations might seem based on luck, but a solution would evolve fairly quickly. Robot soccer is a good example of an open source competition where rapid progress occurs.

Perhaps having a standard platform with cheap components would help. That would leverage division of labor so that teams of pure AI programmers could compete against each other. Hell, making a simulation area would be even better. Thenpeoplecould submit code online.