BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY, NY (WIVT/WBGH) – Over the weekend, students at Binghamton University held their first ever combat robotics tournament.

The Watson Combat Robotics League was founded roughly four years ago and invites anyone on campus and in the community to engineer a robot and duke it out in an arena to see who’s the best fighter.

There are some rules when creating your robot, such as every piece must be 3D printed, the bot cannot use fire or projectiles, and it has to weigh less than a kilogram.

The rules in the arena are simple, either trap the other robot in a corner to win, or damage it to the point where it doesn’t function.

The co-founder of the league, Danny Iacobacci says that there were over 50 people competing this year, and the best bots get invited back to the flagship tournament at the end of the semester.

Co-Founder of the Watson Combat Robotics League, Danny Iacobacci says, “We have a lot of new designs this year. Previously, a lot of the bots had a saw blade style, or like spinner style bots, which is a long tube with sharp points on it to destroy their bots. We have new designs this year where the entire bot is moving and its spinning fast to destroy it. And that gets really exciting, cause we love the non-traditional ways of destroying bots.”

Iacobacci says in the coming years, they hope to implement field elements to the arena, like a hammer coming down from the ceiling, or saw blades coming up from the ground.

Each round lasts two and a half minutes or until the opposing robot can’t fight.

You can watch a replay of the tournament by looking up WCRL Binghamton on Youtube.