Pre-BattleBots Days

Kate Coleman’s article about the BattleBots phenomenon was thorough and informative (“The Rock ‘em, Sock ‘em Robot King, Oct. 8). But it seems impossible to write about the history of gladiator-style remote-controlled combatants without paying homage to a San Francisco-based group that epitomized this format in the 1980s--Survival Research Laboratories. Founded by Mark Pauline, SRL built incredibly engineered machines that were more like military weaponry than toy cars. They sped around the ground on wheels, sidled like crabs on metal augers and crept like spiders on articulated legs.

Jim Jenkins

Costa Mesa