It’s time for fans to get excited for another season of robot carnage. BattleBots is returning to Discovery on January 6, 2022. As ring announcer Faruq Tauheed says when it’s time for the battles to begin, “It’s robot fightin’ time!” And this time, the way the matches are being judged is a little different.

In a Facebook post on the official BattleBots Facebook page on January 1, Discovery outlined how match judging will work this season. The BattleBots team revamped the judging system after several controversial bouts last season. The hope is that using this Judging Matrix to score matches that go to the judges, which is any match that goes the full three minutes, will reduce the amount of controversy in this season’s competition. In addition, Discovery linked to the entire judging manual to explain the Judging Matrix.

Here is the Judging Matrix that will be used to score the matches:

The post explains, “Now the judges have a more objective system to assign points.

For example, in the Damage category:

- Minimal Damage = Doesn’t reduce the functionality or effectiveness of the Bot.

- Moderate = Reduces the effectiveness of the drive, defensibility, or weapon system of the Bot.

- Significant = Eliminates the functionality of the drive, defensibility, or weapon system, or reduces the effectiveness of two or more systems of the Bot.

- Massive = Eliminates the functionality of at least two systems of the Bot.

- Similar amounts of damage = 3-2 with the majority of points going to the bot that either did slightly more damage or sustained less cosmetic damage.”

To break down the Judging Matrix a little bit, we will take a sample bout of Tombstone vs. Hydra. This is an entirely hypothetical matchup, but one that could, in theory, end up with the judges were it to happen during the season.

For this hypothetical battle, Tombstone, which is a horizontal spinner, starts in the red starting box. Hydra, which is a hydraulic flipper, starts in the blue starting box.

Over the course of the three-minute battle, Hydra’s driver is able to avoid many of, but not all of Tombstone’s hits and is able to get a few lucky flips in on Tombstone. Overall, the damage is fairly similar, although on one of the landings, Tombstone broke a piece off its spinner bar on the Battle Box floor. Damage would be scored 3-2 Hydra as a result.

Although Hydra did more damage, Tombstone was able to get a few more hits in, although again, the Control would be fairly even. The fact that Tombstone was able to score a few more hits on Hydra, even with Hydra taking less damage, would award the Control points to Tombstone in a 2-1 score.

Aggression would be the tiebreaker since the score would be 4-4 after Damage and Control. Tombstone usually baits his opponent into his attacks and that is the tack he took in this battle as well. Hydra was more directly aggressive, although both bots were very aggressive in attacking the other bot overall. For being slightly less passive than Tombstone’s “Bait the opponent in” approach, Hydra would be awarded a score of 2-1 in Aggression.

Based on all three categories, a judge could reasonably score this bout as 6-5 in favor of Hydra based on the Judging Matrix.

The BattleBots Facebook post went on to say, “We don’t want to spoil anything, but the Matrix system worked extremely well this season. Will there still be controversial decision, of course. But the new Matrix puts us well on the road to more consistency and objectivity.”

BattleBots fans don’t have long to wait to see how the Judging Matrix will work as BattleBots returns to Discovery on January 6 with streaming on Discovery+.