Robots are fighting: Israeli high-tech enters the most violent arena in the world
A flamethrower that melts steel in seconds, blades spinning at the speed of a jet plane, and artificial intelligence that makes decisions in a split second and drives an armed robot. We visited the biggest event in the world of robot combat, BattleBots, in Las Vegas and went to check how the Israeli company Bright Data turned the geekiest sport in the world into a real testing ground for the next battlefield, and why cat videos on YouTube are more than they seem.
Imagine you are in the center of Las Vegas, but instead of the ringing of casino machines, you hear metal tearing in the air in front of a crowd roaring with enthusiasm. Inside an armored glass cage, two steel giants, each weighing 113 kg, collide head-on with force, sawing and burning each other without mercy. The arena smells of burnt electronic boards and hydraulic oil, and sparks fly everywhere. All this happens at BattleBots — the hit that swept America, where robots turn each other into a pile of expensive scrap metal.
BattleBots is a popular entertainment competition where teams of engineers from all over the world build armored robots armed with flamethrowers, hydraulic hammers, and giant saws. Each team operates its robot using a remote control, and the machines fight in pairs until the opponent is torn to pieces. The web series BattleBots Pro League is broadcast worldwide on a YouTube channel with 2.5 million subscribers, receiving tens of millions of views every month. The current season consists of 20 episodes and is a world championship tournament with professional judges and strict rules.
AI makes decisions in the arena
One of the most fascinating aspects of the league this year is the attempt to integrate autonomous software and advanced artificial intelligence. At the event held last Wednesday, Orbitron participated — a Canadian robot combining a computer vision system. Originally designed with eight cameras on its chassis, it was refined: external cameras installed above the arena transmit data to a powerful computer, while a trajectory prediction algorithm guides the robot for optimal attack.
Human operators of such AI robots currently control only the armament, being completely exempt from driving. A behavioral difference is noticeable: the smart robot acts with restraint and calculation, preferring quick bursts of attack. This raises practical and philosophical questions: can AI beat human intuition and strategy? And will AI vs. AI wars become the new standard?
Bright Data's role: from data collection to Physical AI
Behind the scenes stands the Israeli technology giant Bright Data, the main sponsor of BattleBots. The company provides infrastructure for systematic data collection from the open internet, and more than 75% of the world's large language models (LLMs) use its services. Now, the company aims to enable the embedding of Physical AI capabilities into robots.
There is a bottleneck in this field: there is a lack of quality data for training robots to interact with the physical world. Bright Data harnesses its tools to scan millions of hours of video on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, annotating incidental events — from changing a light bulb to washing dishes. This creates diverse databases for training spatial perception systems, bypassing the slow and costly process of laboratory recording.
Bright Data's story began in 2014, specializing in automatic information collection (scraping). Today, it is second only to Google in the volume of data passing through it. The company has developed the ability to extract information in large quantities without crashing sites or getting blocked, using residential proxies and a technique called "backoff" to manage server load.
For ethical reasons, Bright Data limits its tools to collecting public content only. Legal precedents in the US against Meta and X have confirmed the legitimacy of their operations, striking a blow against information monopolies. Today, the company employs 580 people, and its infrastructure serves more than 20,000 business customers worldwide.
The Israeli scene
Interest in this sport is also growing in Israel: the local robot combat community will hold four tournaments this year. At the upcoming event on August 21, about 25 robots will enter the arena. Admission is free, and organizers provide open guides for anyone wanting to build their own war machine. The event is produced in cooperation with the Thunderbolts 2630 robotics team from Emek Hefer.
