The rules
Summarised in our own words from the format Hebocon has used since 2014. If anything here contradicts what a judge says on the day, the judge is right.
Your robot
- No larger than 50 × 50 cm. Height is not restricted, which people abuse.
- No heavier than 1 kg, weighed with batteries in.
- It has to move by itself once a match starts. Anything at all counts as moving.
- No flames, no liquids, no sharp edges, nothing that can hurt an opponent, a judge or the audience.
- No commercial fighting robot bought and entered as-is. Build something.
The ring
Roughly 100 × 50 cm — a small rectangle, deliberately. There is nowhere to hide and matches are short.
Winning, such as it is
- The first robot to leave the ring loses.
- A robot that tips over loses, whether or not anything caused it.
- Matches last one minute. If both robots are still in the ring and upright at the end, the one that has travelled the shorter distance loses. Doing nothing is not a strategy.
- A win is worth 10 points.
Low-tech protection
If a robot is so poorly built that it fails in a way that is nobody's fault — it never starts, or a wheel simply falls off — a judge may void the match and replay it. This can happen at most twice per matchup. After that the result stands, however sad.
The High-Tech Penalty
Penalty. Every high-tech feature costs 6 points per match. A win is worth 10. Two clever ideas and winning is mathematically worse than losing.
Declare your high-tech features when you register. Judges will find undeclared ones anyway, and finding them is part of the entertainment.
Things that count:
- Microcontrollers, single-board computers, anything programmable
- Sensors of any kind
- Remote control and radio links
- Bought-in robot kits and drive modules
- Anything a judge decides looks like it required knowing something
Things that do not count: a motor, a battery, a switch, tape, glue, cardboard, and whatever you found in the kitchen.
Behaviour
Be pleasant to your opponent, cheer for the robot that is losing, and accept the judge's decision. Anyone taking this seriously enough to argue will be gently reminded what they have entered.
Sarawak local rules
Being confirmed. This section will list anything specific to the Sarawak edition — divisions, team sizes, and any local scoring the judges add. Check back before you build, or join the mailing list and we will tell you when it lands.
The original rule book
The summary above is ours. Hebocon Global publishes its own official rule book — the same one every chapter works from.