'Bot #1' had taken some heavy blows.
Felix Smith, the nine-year-old creator, was pointing out the war wounds on the first iteration of the battling robot's form.
A chunk was missing from the bright red trim near the shovel that was designed to slip beneath the competition and flip them onto their backs. There were marks here and there. Battle scars.
"He's really good at getting out of traps because he's tiny," Felix said on Saturday, August 15.
He had conceded his first bout to a yellow bot that had cornered him and rolled Bot #1 onto its roof. As he spoke, Felix was examining the wheels and considering how to improve the steering to perform better next time.
"He has defeated bigger robots," he said. "It's not the speed. If you have less speed, you have more control. But if you have more speed, it's more likely that you will end up in the pit."
The pit was a trap door inside the arena that opened if, after a set time, one of the two battling robots had not yet claimed victory.
If a competitor could not be incapacitated (read: broken) by the challenger's armaments, flipped and rendered unable to move, or otherwise brought down, the battles were decided by who survived the pit.
The competition had been a crowd favourite through the morning at the Windale Hub on Lake Street where, to kick off National Science Week, Lake Macquarie City Council sought makers and inventors, the curious and the clever, to show off their wares for Maker-Con26.
"Kids are either concrete learners or formal learners," the science communicator Ben Newsome said, watching as youngsters tinkered with the slew of interactive gadgets, experiments and gizmos arranged on a table.
There were no instructions or dense theory. To discover what each item did, the children had to pick things up, turn them over, link one thing with something else, or take it apart.
"Concrete learners are literally trying to figure out how the world works by touching it," Mr Newsome said.
Seven-year-old Archie Anderson picked up a pair of cardboard-rimmed glasses and slipped them on. They were wide across his nose and he held them in place to see what the clear lenses might reveal.
As his eyes caught the ceiling, the flat white light from the fixtures shattered into a kaleidoscope of colour.
They were diffraction lenses, Mr Newsome said later, used to divide and measure light into separate wavelengths. They can be used to gauge the relative distance, position and movement of the most distant stars in the cosmos.
The same light patterns that Archie was seeing through his goggles had been used to prove that the universe was expanding.
Claire Chaikin-Bryan, the lead in the Windale Hub's 'Fab Lab' - a workshop of 3D printers and tables strewn with crafting supplies - coordinated the weekend's event that included live shows, maker stalls, workshops and crafting.
She had focused her work in the lab on encouraging kids, and particularly young girls, to approach the sciences through art as a way of navigating early hurdles and stigma.
The art is a vehicle for experimenting with 3D printing, design, laser cutting and electronics, and bridges the gap between sectors where separation is never as stark as it appears.
"We're going to see more technology integrated into society in the use of data and AI and all of that," Ms Chaikin-Bryan added. 'Having these basic skills helps us understand how these things work."
National Science Week continues through August 23.
