They slowly move through the ring and then, with a sudden turn, tear into their opponents. Another round of kick boxing? Backyard brawling? No, it’s “BattleBots,” Comedy Central’s highly-rated cable television show where radio-controlled androids attack each other with rotating saw blades, spring-loaded sledge hammers and an assortment of sharp metal objects. “It’s violence, but not against people. So it’s fun,” said Peter Abrahamson, Burbank-based robot builder and competitor in the world of robot fighting. Since BattleBots hit the airwaves two years ago, the show has grown to become one of the network’s most popular shows. It is the channel’s third most popular program, averaging a 0.3 rating last month and well above the 0.1 average for most cable TV shows, according to Nielsen Media Research. “It seems to attract all kinds of people who are really into these robots,” said Comedy Central spokeswoman Samara Robinson. A competition in San Francisco last month attracted more than 1,400 fans. Two months ago, the 34-year-old Abrahamson transformed his hobby of building metal roughnecks into a business. “It turned to something more as more people were asking me to help them build their own competition robots,” said the USC graduate, who owns Ronin Special Effects in Burbank, which specializes in animatronic figures for movies and is just now moving into the world of battling robots. Abrahamson said he’s made “a few thousand” dollars so far. His own competition robot, “Ronin” (Japanese for warrior without a master), is awaiting its second bout later this summer. Abrahamson would not say how Ronin did against an opponent earlier this year because the BattleBots episode on which the episode appears has not aired yet. In the meantime, Abrahamson has begun building parts for other robot builders who may not have his knack for assembling things like a four-foot metal arm with a 16-inch saw blade attached to it. “Actually, the blade isn’t that effective as a weapon, but it can do damage,” he said. Some robots use more effective sledgehammers or rotating hammer-like devices to deliver a stiff hit; others have large pointy metal objects to skewer and tear open other robots. Since the bouts are scored much like boxing matches, the winner is usually the one that delivers the most effective blows it’s hard to knock a robot unconscious. Abrahamson and fellow robot builder Dan Danknick founded Team Delta Engineering to create these metal warriors for enthusiasts of a trend that at least officials at Comedy Central believe is just about to explode. Danknick said he plans to retire his own battling robot and devote his time to selling robot parts to other builders as part of his partnership with Abrahamson. “It’s very hard to get parts and equipment,” he said, “so it’s easier for people to come to us and know that we can get these things for them.” The partnership has already received a number of orders, but Abrahamson says he hopes to expand into building robots for others as the company grows. BattleBots rules limit fighting robots to dimensions of 8 feet wide and 8 feet high. Flaming fire, chemicals, projectiles and electrical charges are not allowed as weapons. “They probably don’t want somebody blowing themselves up in a garage trying to build a robot, or have someone seriously injured on the show,” Abrahamson said. The robots are sent into a 48-foot-by-48-foot arena surrounded by shatterproof glass to protect audience members and robot controllers from flying shrapnel. The arena, better known as the BattleBox, features traps, sledgehammers, buzz saws and metal spikes that emerge from the floor to offer added hazards to the robots if and when the contests drag. “It’s a little like ancient Rome for robots,” Abrahamson said. The competition is an offshoot of Robot Wars, begun in 1994 in San Francisco by Marc Thorpe, a special effects technician with George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic. That competition is still held annually and televised on The Learning Channel, using rules similar to BattleBots. Christian Carlberg, owner of North Hills-based C2 Robotics, is also making his bid for profitability in the robot business. He said his year-old company will break even with about $320,000 in sales this year. “We gained a reputation in being able to build good quality robots for BattleBots. Then we had a couple of people who wanted us to build their robots, so that’s how it started,” Carlberg said. A former aerospace engineer, Carlberg and his two employees can build a BattleBots-ready robot in six weeks that they will retail for between $15,000 and $25,000. But those seeking a championship caliber android will have to shell out more much more, he said. “We can build a $70,000 robot that can beat anyone, but there aren’t too many people that can pay that,” he said. Last year, Carlberg’s “Minion,” with an unusual hammer-like device that caught competitors by surprise, pounded its way to the championship in seeming short order. His other robots, “Buzzcut,” “Overkill” and “Toecrusher,” have also made quick work of robotic pretenders. But the big money, he said, is in robot building, not the competitions. The grand prize for each episode of BattleBots is $8,000; the second-place team gets $4,000. Everybody else is out of the money. Typically, there are three fights on a half-hour episode. “It seems crazy to spend $25,000 to make a robot so you can win $8,000, but we do it because it’s fun,” Abrahamson said. Competitors, however, do share in residual payments whenever BattleBots is aired, usually a few hundred dollars per episode. Like other competitors, Abrahamson has lined up a couple of sponsors a small software maker and a metallurgy firm who subsidize his travel expenses and repairs to injured robots. Abrahamson will get a little bit of added exposure when his Ronin is part of a toy line introduced by Hasbro Inc. next month featuring some of the show’s most popular robots. There, however, will not be any money coming his way: “BattleBots” producers own all licensing rights to the competing robots. “But it’s nice to see that he’s out there in a toy form,” he added. Carlberg hopes eventually to develop specialized robots for theme parks. “The film business doesn’t provide enough volume for us, so we want to branch out,” he said. Abrahamson, on the other hand, plans to keep his day job building animatronic creatures for films. In the past, he’s developed creatures for “Men in Black II,” “Dr. Doolittle,” “Me, Myself and Irene” and the “Energizer Bunny” commercials.