Robot Wars is coming back

[Evangelion]

I've been thinking in terms of a long, hardened-steel spike that shoots out from the front (or side, or back) of the robot. It would concentrate the force into a small area, even more so if it were heavy. Any thoughts?

[FourWheelDrift]

Evangelion said:

I've been thinking in terms of a long, hardened-steel spike that shoots out from the front (or side, or back) of the robot. It would concentrate the force into a small area, even more so if it were heavy. Any thoughts?

All they do is push the other robot away, or the robot firing the spike. Spikes have never worked.

[PhillipM]

Evangelion said:

I've been thinking in terms of a long, hardened-steel spike that shoots out from the front (or side, or back) of the robot. It would concentrate the force into a small area, even more so if it were heavy. Any thoughts?

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
In this case, spike goes forward, your robot goes back, inflicted damage is bugger all. The reason spinners work is they can store energy built up over several seconds of full motor power.

[PanzerCommander]

Evangelion said:

I've been thinking in terms of a long, hardened-steel spike that shoots out from the front (or side, or back) of the robot. It would concentrate the force into a small area, even more so if it were heavy. Any thoughts?

Kinetic stabbers, bolt guns, call them what you will, have been tried before with limited success. I think it would work on softer parts of the robot (exposed tyres or anything with thin/non existent armour) but unless you had a method of grabbing it and holding it still, pincers or a Razr type overhead crushing arm or had it pinned against a wall, the energy would be dissipated to readily, iirc you are also limited (mentioned on a previous page) to 1,000psi on the gas systems?

[sjg]

RedLeicester said:

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.

The build rules go into it more and it's quite a challenge to have something compliant with the safety rules and that won't fail under the kind of punishment they get.

It must be an easily removable link (without tools), must be in a visible place away from weaponry and drive, it can be covered but the cover must be able to be opened without tools, and if the robot is capable of running inverted then it needs one on each side.

[threespires]

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.

I enjoyed that clip.

The Director didn't feel the need to keep switching to shots the 'Nerds' driving the robots.

Can we have the same Director for the UK shows please.

[davegreg]

Enjoying the series so far, only small niggle for me is will the presenters PLEASE stop using the phrase 'Give it up for.........' So 1990's!!

[ClockworkCupcake]

davegreg said:

Enjoying the series so far, only small niggle for me is will the presenters PLEASE stop using the phrase 'Give it up for.........' So 1990's!!

What irks me is the female presenter starting off each and every interview with "Can you just talk me through..."

That phrase really irks me. The lass on Sky F1 does it too.

[g4ry13]

ClockworkCupcake said:

What irks me is the female presenter starting off each and every interview with "Can you just talk me through..."

That phrase really irks me. The lass on Sky F1 does it too.

She actually talks?!? I must have been too busy thinking of other things to pay attention.

[Japveesix]

ClockworkCupcake 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

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

I've been watching far too many Battlebots fights on youtube recently and this one has to be one of my favourites. So much destruction and wild.jumping around (apologies for rubbish vid quality)
https://youtu.be/FAmoo44ZtbM

[anonymous-user]

I've quite enjoyed the first series back.
Some of the robots could do with being more refined (and some have been a little rubbish) but some are seriously good!

My only slight irk has been that some of the robots from the old series (Storm 2/Dantomkia) haven't been as good as they were previously. In particular Storm 2 was a really exciting robot in the older series, it was so fast and very well driven that even though it was a 'pushbot' it could be very exciting and even managed to put a robot out by slamming it into the corner.

It'll be interesting to see how the good robots perform against each other in the final.

I do wonder whether the Battlebots have a bit more freedom in terms of the regulations. For example the height Bronco has been able to achieve in flipping other robots is massive compared to anything in the UK shows, and when the pressure limit was raised I wonder if the US robots have the same requirements?

[Evangelion]

Japveesix said:

I've been watching far too many Battlebots fights on youtube recently and this one has to be one of my favourites. So much destruction and wild.jumping around (apologies for rubbish vid quality)
https://youtu.be/FAmoo44ZtbM

True, the 'postage stamp in one corner' format is a bit off-putting! OTOH there is more action in those couple of minutes than entire episodes of RW.

[ClockworkCupcake]

cookie118 said:

My only slight irk has been that some of the robots from the old series (Storm 2/Dantomkia) haven't been as good as they were previously. In particular Storm 2 was a really exciting robot in the older series, it was so fast and very well driven that even though it was a 'pushbot' it could be very exciting and even managed to put a robot out by slamming it into the corner.

You need to remember two things:

1. The roboteers were given very little time to prepare for this series, and it was all very rushed
2. Many of the older robots have been sold on to new teams by their original builders, who have gone on to better things with the money. That's certainly true of Dontomkia. So different team and different driver.

[hairykrishna]

cookie118 said:

I do wonder whether the Battlebots have a bit more freedom in terms of the regulations. For example the height Bronco has been able to achieve in flipping other robots is massive compared to anything in the UK shows, and when the pressure limit was raised I wonder if the US robots have the same requirements?

There's a 1000psi pressure limit in Robot Wars - in reality they were all running CO2 in a cold warehouse, with no heating of tanks allowed, so something like 700 psi. I'm not sure what the rules pressure limit is in Battlebots but I do know that it, and other rules like maximum motor voltage, are 'soft' limits which you're allowed to exceed if you can convince the shows technical people that you're competent. I'm pretty sure that Bronco is running it's rams at the full pressure of it's hpa tanks, so 4500psi.

[FourWheelDrift]

"With the flipper at full capacity Bronco stretched by half an inch."

https://www.reddit.com/r/battlebots/comments/3dg2w...

[Xaero]

Revealing more of my Robot wars geeky knowledge here, but there have been some pretty impressive flippers before. The best probably being demonstrated on the fight Wheely Big Cheese Vs Axe Awe, Here is a youtube video of the fight

That link also shows off the old music, camera work, editing, format and presenters, it was a much better show. This series is crap in all honesty. Nothing has moved forward except maybe the arena being more enclosed to not give flippers such a huge advantage. In the later series' before the pit couldn't be activated for the first minute of the fight which always made sense to me because the pushing robots got boring with their success too. Even the really expensive robots have been a bit st this year.

[g4ry13]

Xaero said:

Revealing more of my Robot wars geeky knowledge here, but there have been some pretty impressive flippers before. The best probably being demonstrated on the fight Wheely Big Cheese Vs Axe Awe, Here is a youtube video of the fight

That link also shows off the old music, camera work, editing, format and presenters, it was a much better show. This series is crap in all honesty. Nothing has moved forward except maybe the arena being more enclosed to not give flippers such a huge advantage. In the later series' before the pit couldn't be activated for the first minute of the fight which always made sense to me because the pushing robots got boring with their success too. Even the really expensive robots have been a bit st this year.

It was probably one of the most powerful flippers but it was really slow. The gas powered ones were more effective.

[ajprice]

I was at Game dear/Insomnia 58 at NEC yesterday (PC/Consoles and games, D&D, Cosplay, and a robot fighting setup. The robots there were RC car size, and could be picked up with one hand, and it was their creating day before fighting today, so not much happened in the little arena setup they had. Anyway, between 2 halls, fenced off, they had Dead Metal and Shunt from this series in show. They are massive, especially Dead Metal.






And Battlebots is starting on Spike on Sunday 4th September 8pm with the 2015 series (hopefully they follow it on with this year's series straight after)

[MarkRSi]

Grand final tonight

[RDM]

I do enjoy a bit of Robot Wars, and I assume it's been said before, but
Surely these things aren't actually robots.