Robot Wars is coming back

[MikeyC]

Sonic said:

That 2-wheeled thing was quite funny in that it was so basic and it's only redeeming feature was that its wheels were so big it elevated everything out of the way, and allowed it to just roll over any competitors, but it was pathetic in that it had near zero offensive and no ability to finish another robot off - not even to push it into the pit!

I *think* it may have done some damage to that open-wheeled bot which appeared to have problems with one of it's drive wheels, but really it's more luck than jugdement !

Sonic said:

I dislike the pit, i mean it serves a purpose if a competitor is immobilised to put it in the pit and finalise the match, but beyond that it just seems very unfair and artificially creates unsatisfactory results. If the pit has to be there, i'd much rather that it could only be used in the last minute, or perhaps not used in the first multi-battle stages at all.

yeah, only allowing it in the last minute might be an idea

227bhp said:

Has anyone noticed how one of the house robots is listed as weighing 750kg? That can't be right, one too many zeros on that maybe?

yeah, house robots conform to their own set of rules - ie anything goes !
the floor must be pretty substantial

personally, not a great fan of the house bots

[Dr Doofenshmirtz]

It's difficult to be fast on that slippery metal surface though. You'd need some super soft rubber, which would make you vulnerable.
Strong pincers (like Razer which had an incredible bite) or flippers like that white thing last week seem to be the way to go.

[MikeyC]

ikarl said:

So, if I was designing a robot - fast, manoeuvrable, no moving weapons, single spike and robust so nothing breaks.

Use the weight of the robot as your weapon!

yeah - keeping it simple is best !

my idea would be to have a sloped front shield which would be angled in a semi-type circle so spinners wouldn't have a solid front or corners to hit, they would simply bounce off upwards since the bottom of the shield is on the arena floor.

this could be used as a battering ram if driven at high speed
obviously all fragile bits inside need to have some form of shock isolation so minimal damage if it hits the arena side instead

would have a horizontal barrel spinner at the rear

a switch on the Transmitter could switch the motor directions so what was the 'forward' direction now becomes reverse (ie the front of the bot becomes the back & vice-versa) so you can always drive 'forward' using whichever weapon you want

[anonymous-user]

I've never watched any of the original series but caught a couple of the new one and it seems pretty cool....but following a link from above, the US version kicks ass...we need it more like this!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkbAcwYix7I&li...

I recognise a couple of the teams from the US series, are the guys behind the US Cobalt the same as the UK's Carbide..?

[MarkRSi]

DrSteveBrule said:

AshBurrows said:

One of the battle bots picks up other bots and holds them in the air while shooting a flame thrower at them haha. It's pretty rad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkB2X3lbnGc

Also they should get rid of the pit.

The lifting idea is excellent. Shame flamethrowers aren't allowed in the UK version.

I was more impressed by the flying flamethrower! (Until it crashed)

[ikarl]

with the amount of fans, and the engineering knowledge, on PH I'm pretty sure a PH team would do ok

plenty of resources to 'source' parts from

[ajprice]

MarkRSi said:

I was more impressed by the flying flamethrower! (Until it crashed)

How to kill a flamethrower drone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDHPEyT8mIU

[anonymous-user]

ikarl said:

with the amount of fans, and the engineering knowledge, on PH I'm pretty sure a PH team would do ok

plenty of resources to 'source' parts from

Would an armour-plated MX-5 be allowed into the arena?

[Jetblackonetenth]

It also should be able to hammer frozen sausages into the arena floor

[ClockworkCupcake]

AshBurrows said:

One of the battle bots picks up other bots and holds them in the air while shooting a flame thrower at them haha. It's pretty rad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkB2X3lbnGc

Well that was in another league compared to our rather tame Robot Wars.

[ClockworkCupcake]

227bhp said:

Ah I see, but that is 3/4 of a metric ton, wasn't it flipped last week? It can't weigh that much, it's more than a Smart car!

And yet I could flip a Smart Car on its side with nothing more than a high lift jack and a length of scaffold pipe.

Edited by ClockworkCupcake on Monday 22 August 20:53

[MarkRSi]

ajprice said:

MarkRSi said:

I was more impressed by the flying flamethrower! (Until it crashed)

How to kill a flamethrower drone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDHPEyT8mIU

[poing]

AshBurrows said:

One of the battle bots picks up other bots and holds them in the air while shooting a flame thrower at them haha. It's pretty rad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkB2X3lbnGc

Also they should get rid of the pit.

As much as it pains me to admit this, the Americans have done this better. Shouldn't be a surprise they are generally better at violence. No pit, no house robots and walls that cause damage is what we should have too. We also need flame throwers, in fact some of the walls should have plasma cutters on them so you can push another robot onto it.

[OwenK]

Thought this was a really interesting episode for ideas. Pulsar was clearly well-built and had a powerful weapon. The noise of that thing must have an intimidation factor all of its own. I was curious about one of the robots that went in the pit in the first round, they said they had triple redundancies on the electronics which I thought was sensible given how many drop out as a result of minor electrical issues rather than actual destruction. Gabriel had a pants weapon but I was seriously impressed at its resilience, the design is actually really good for the normal competitor robot designs: your vulnerable bits are generally out of reach so they're safe from most damage, your wheels act like shields so you can only be attacked from directly in front or behind, which is also where you want them to be for your weapon, and even though the wheels are huge targets they are so simple and tough that youd have to entirely take one of them off to completely immobilise it - even totally bent out of shape and chewed up by spinners it'll keep going because the robot body is so small it'll never get stuck on the floor.

Would like to see someone use the big wheel high body concept but with a decent weapon. Perhaps use a hoverboard logic board to keep the body level, and a circular saw that drops down from the body to whatever lies beneath. Bonus: robot looks like it's teabagging the enemy.

[PhillipM]

Gabriel type bot with a great vertical flywheel in the middle hanging down would be interesting....

[227bhp]

ClockworkCupcake said:

227bhp said:

Ah I see, but that is 3/4 of a metric ton, wasn't it flipped last week? It can't weigh that much, it's more than a Smart car!

And yet I could flip a Smart Car on its side with nothing more than a high lift jack and a length of scaffold pipe.

Edited by ClockworkCupcake on Monday 22 August 20:53

Very good.

[ajprice]

PhillipM said:

Gabriel type bot with a great vertical flywheel in the middle hanging down would be interesting....

Nightmare has been in maybe every series of Battlebots. Big vertical disc and not much else to it. When it's good, it does damage. Otherwise it's as much of a danger to itself than it is to the other robot. Many videos of it through the years on YouTube.

[RedLeicester]

Not that I'm any use with engineering but I'm amazed over the course of the series how many bots have been rendered incapable and subsequently said "the link came out" - now clearly the link is some sort of safety cutoff, but surely they'd be designing the thing to take anticipated hits from spinners or being flipped around, so you'd plan for exactly that to happen. Rather too many seemed to go down too easily.

Gabriel was ace, my kids were convinced it'd get mashed and we talked about how the plastic might actually be a clever call.... okay so it didn't do massive amounts of damage by much other than luck, but good god it was resilient, even when grabbed.

[FourWheelDrift]

Gabriel reminded me of Stinger, but stinger had a much better mace and could spin fast using it is a horizontal weapon as well as a vertical club.

One of the Stinger team created Infernal Contraption for RW6 & RW7 and ironically Sundays round against Gabriel. Although as with many old robots it wasn't the same team.

http://robotwars.wikia.com/wiki/Stinger

http://robotwars.wikia.com/wiki/Infernal_Contrapti...

[PanzerCommander]

I have been quite happy with the new Robot Wars thus far. I do wonder though if some of the competitors (a MDF armored robot for example) have ever watched the previous incarnations of the show or any of its spin offs, I'm not saying I could build a championship winning fighting robot at the first attempt but there are some things you just do not do, exposed tyres and wood armour are two of them.

I wonder what happened to Sgt. Bash? did his flame thrower fall foul of the V.C.R. Bill?

OwenK said:

Thought this was a really interesting episode for ideas. Pulsar was clearly well-built and had a powerful weapon. The noise of that thing must have an intimidation factor all of its own. I was curious about one of the robots that went in the pit in the first round, they said they had triple redundancies on the electronics which I thought was sensible given how many drop out as a result of minor electrical issues rather than actual destruction. Gabriel had a pants weapon but I was seriously impressed at its resilience, the design is actually really good for the normal competitor robot designs: your vulnerable bits are generally out of reach so they're safe from most damage, your wheels act like shields so you can only be attacked from directly in front or behind, which is also where you want them to be for your weapon, and even though the wheels are huge targets they are so simple and tough that youd have to entirely take one of them off to completely immobilise it - even totally bent out of shape and chewed up by spinners it'll keep going because the robot body is so small it'll never get stuck on the floor.

Would like to see someone use the big wheel high body concept but with a decent weapon. Perhaps use a hoverboard logic board to keep the body level, and a circular saw that drops down from the body to whatever lies beneath. Bonus: robot looks like it's teabagging the enemy.

Indeed, a robot that when I first saw it, I sniggered and sat back awaiting its untimely death at the hands of anything that spun round only to be surprised at its ability to survive.

that would be brilliant, call it El Baggio or something similar.

You can just imagine it (Dara would pick up on it straight away) whilst being interviewed at the start, "So why is your robot called El Baggio", "Erm..."