The competition, which is now in its seventh year, is currently the only heavyweight robot fighting competition in North America.

FORBES: Robots Battle With Fire And Saw This Weekend At ComBots VII

Once he has proved that this arrangement can bury itself in a satisfactory manner, he plans to run a competition between robot clams with different shell shapes in order to understand what makes some more efficient than others.

ECONOMIST: Robots

Those looking to tinker with humanoid robots aren't exactly lacking for options these days, but Cognitive Spring is taking a slightly different approach than most with its Arduino-based cSpring bipedal robot -- one of the semifinalists in the Insert Coin competition here at Expand.

ENGADGET: Insert Coin semifinalist: cSpring bipedal robot platform hands-on (video)

In other 2012 International CES news, Lytro won the Last Gadget Standing SuperSession competition, beating nine other finalists, including the Playstation Vita, Autom Robot, Cotton Candy, WIMM, Origami, Svivl, Basis Body Band, Lenovo Yoga and Samsung Note.

ENGADGET: CES 2012 sets all-time records for attendance, exhibitors and claimed floor space

The ultimate goal of the competition's creators is to pit human players against a dream team of robot counterparts within the next few decades.

BBC: Bots bend it like Beckham

It is not just the winners of the competition that will be off to Dortmund in Germany in June for the official Robot World Cup.

BBC: NEWS | Technology | Robotic footballers have a ball