PBS isn’t just for the stuffy, intellectual set anymore.

And if you don’t believe it, check out “Robot Wars.” It’s a British import, but there’s nary an upper-class accent within earshot.

“Robot Wars” is just what its name implies: homemade, remote-controlled robots — most no larger than a breadbox — battle the show’s robots and each other for bragging rights and geek glory.

Who makes these mechanical fighting machines? High school students, college students, inventors, engineers, tinkerers and radio-control enthusiasts — anybody who wants to compete. Some are made from scratch, using the latest electromechanical technology available. At the other extreme is a robot a recent competitor made from the innards of a battery-powered wheelchair found in a neighbor’s back yard.

The battling bots take on the “Robot Wars” house bots in gladiator-style competition. Age and credentials don’t count. But survival does.

The action is played out before a live audience on a set with more glitz, glamour, flashing colored lights and bizarre sounds than “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” It’s a question of the survival of the fittest in the face of obstacles more awesome than Regis Philbin – obstacles such as a gigantic mace on a pendulum, the Pit of Doom, and the ever awesome Mathilda, a killer house-bot that shoots sparks and maneuvers the unwary into the Flames of Death.

Powered mostly by a couple of 12-volt batteries, the robots move at speeds ranging from 2 to 6 miles an hour. Armed with weapons such as metal-ripping saws, rotor screws, steel spikes, hydraulic forklifts and air-pressure-powered hammers, the bots first battle one by one against house bots to move from point A to point B, then take on each other in one-on-one “King of the Hill” contests until only a single bot is left standing — or functioning. Their names evoke doom and destruction: Killdozer, The Mule, Enzyme, Phoenix, Mega Hurts and Plunderbird (whose operator, on one recent episode, kept calling for “more violence, more violence!”).

Presiding over the competition and providing blow-by-blow commentary with breathless frenzy is host Craig Charles (Lister on “Red Dwarf”), whose working-class British accent provides the only clue that “Robot Wars” just might be a public television presentation.

“Robot Wars” is kinky television. It’s bizarre, fascinating and absurd. It’s also an enormous amount of fun.