Robot Wars is coming back

[Funk]

Ste1987 said:

Apollo was my favourite and glad they won. I recall in the Craig Charles-era someone taking on the house robots like Apollo did, anyone remember who that was? I vaguely remember Craig giving the team a telling off in a joking way.

Chaos 2: https://youtu.be/J3Kp70VKT4M?t=102

[RedLeicester]

RemyMartin said:

Kill it with fire.

Hopefully any more series are canned, god why did I torture myself every week hoping it would be good.

Somethings are best left dead imo. Robots are truly gash and unless lots of really rich people build house robot standard bots its completely pointless.

Wow, captain miseryguts.

[FiF]

RedLeicester said:

RemyMartin said:

Kill it with fire.

Hopefully any more series are canned, god why did I torture myself every week hoping it would be good.

Somethings are best left dead imo. Robots are truly gash and unless lots of really rich people build house robot standard bots its completely pointless.

Wow, captain miseryguts.

Quite, no doubt he also doesn't like Red Bull soap box challenge, another effort that doesn't take itself too seriously.

Back on topic I reckon some of the competitors are built to higher standards than the house robots, who only get away with what they do by virtue of significant weight advantage, 3 to 7 times the weight of the competitors. Even lightweights like Matilda are 350 kgs.

[clonmult]

Haven't watched the finale yet, but at weekend spent a bit of time with my son catching up on prior episodes and also watching a fair bit of Battlebots.

Robot Wars has charm, but in general compared to the devices in Battlebots, most of our entries are seriously pathetic. Okay, there may be slight budgetary discrepancies between the robots on the two shows, but tombstone would rip all the UK robots apart, and Bronco would be able to flip all of the house robots with ease.

[RizzoTheRat]

GTiRichTea said:

Just to give you an idea of the power of carbides weapons compared to say hypno-disc from original RW:

Hypno-Disc:
Horizontal flywheel weighing 20kg that spins at 900rpm

Carbide:
Bar spinner weighing 25kg and spinning at 2300RPM

That is a big jump in kinetic energy

Bear in mind it's also about where that weight is, the further from the axis the greater the moment of inertia and the higher the kinetic energy. Carbide looked to be a bit heavier at the tips, but the one earlier on with the disk mounted underneath looked to have most of the weight in the rim, and so much gyro effect that it balanced on one wheel for a fair while in the pit. The one with the hubless disk all the way round the outside was pretty potent too but mechanically too complex.

Caught up on the last 2 episodes last night, agree that the best 2 made it through to the final.

[Ste1987]

Funk said:

Ste1987 said:

Apollo was my favourite and glad they won. I recall in the Craig Charles-era someone taking on the house robots like Apollo did, anyone remember who that was? I vaguely remember Craig giving the team a telling off in a joking way.

Chaos 2: https://youtu.be/J3Kp70VKT4M?t=102

Ha! Deja Vu!

[FourWheelDrift]

GTiRichTea said:

Just to give you an idea of the power of carbides weapons compared to say hypno-disc from original RW:

Hypno-Disc:
Horizontal flywheel weighing 20kg that spins at 900rpm

Carbide:
Bar spinner weighing 25kg and spinning at 2300RPM

That is a big jump in kinetic energy

Bit extra from old RW. In Robot Wars 7 X-Terminator's vertical spinning disc spun at 1500rpm and the series winner Typhoon 2 was a full body spinner weighing 98kg and spun at 700 rpm.

[hairykrishna]

FourWheelDrift said:

GTiRichTea said:

Just to give you an idea of the power of carbides weapons compared to say hypno-disc from original RW:

Hypno-Disc:
Horizontal flywheel weighing 20kg that spins at 900rpm

Carbide:
Bar spinner weighing 25kg and spinning at 2300RPM

That is a big jump in kinetic energy

Bit extra from old RW. In Robot Wars 7 X-Terminator's vertical spinning disc spun at 1500rpm and the series winner Typhoon 2 was a full body spinner weighing 98kg and spun at 700 rpm.

I think Tombstone in Battlebots is the nastiest of the current generation spinners in terms of KE (or at least, the nastiest that actually works properly). His longest bar stores 100KJ of energy and gets up to full speed in a couple of seconds. I seem to remember from an interview that Carbide's hitting about 60KJ. Hypnodisk was ~10KJ.
Battlebots is already more or less at the limit of what people are going to be able to do safely with spinners - they're already talking about limiting weapon tip speed next year. Any more and the 1.5 inches of polycarb they use for the box is going to struggle to contain the bits.

I think if Robot Wars gets another series we'll see a big jump in the standard of the robots. People will have a lot more time and the chances of getting sponsors is much higher if your bot's on TV so budgets will go up.

[vonuber]

Thoroughly enjoyed that. It's good that reliability is still a huge factor.

[RizzoTheRat]

Just watched a few Battlebots rounds on YouTube. Bloody hell those commentators are annoying.

Edited by RizzoTheRat on Wednesday 31st August 10:00

[lufbramatt]

So I think overall, remote control vehicles fighting each other is still a good idea. But needs more music, more hype, less Dara O'Briain being boring. But not in an annoying American way. Needs someone a bit eccentric like Robert Llewellyn used to be on Scrapheap Challenge.

[AlexS]

hairykrishna said:

FourWheelDrift said:

GTiRichTea said:

Just to give you an idea of the power of carbides weapons compared to say hypno-disc from original RW:

Hypno-Disc:
Horizontal flywheel weighing 20kg that spins at 900rpm

Carbide:
Bar spinner weighing 25kg and spinning at 2300RPM

That is a big jump in kinetic energy

Bit extra from old RW. In Robot Wars 7 X-Terminator's vertical spinning disc spun at 1500rpm and the series winner Typhoon 2 was a full body spinner weighing 98kg and spun at 700 rpm.

I think Tombstone in Battlebots is the nastiest of the current generation spinners in terms of KE (or at least, the nastiest that actually works properly). His longest bar stores 100KJ of energy and gets up to full speed in a couple of seconds. I seem to remember from an interview that Carbide's hitting about 60KJ. Hypnodisk was ~10KJ.
Battlebots is already more or less at the limit of what people are going to be able to do safely with spinners - they're already talking about limiting weapon tip speed next year. Any more and the 1.5 inches of polycarb they use for the box is going to struggle to contain the bits.

I think if Robot Wars gets another series we'll see a big jump in the standard of the robots. People will have a lot more time and the chances of getting sponsors is much higher if your bot's on TV so budgets will go up.

IIRC X-Terminator actually managed to flip another robot out of the arena with its spinner.

It would be interesting to see how Carbides weapon compared to Fluffy (another bar spinner but with heavy tips and reliability problems) and Supernova and Disc-O-Inferno.

[anonymous-user]

clonmult said:

Haven't watched the finale yet, but at weekend spent a bit of time with my son catching up on prior episodes and also watching a fair bit of Battlebots.

Robot Wars has charm, but in general compared to the devices in Battlebots, most of our entries are seriously pathetic. Okay, there may be slight budgetary discrepancies between the robots on the two shows, but tombstone would rip all the UK robots apart, and Bronco would be able to flip all of the house robots with ease.

It's the regs as well, the UK robots are more heavily regulated and I think that Bronco is running with about 4-5x the pressure the UK bots are allowed.

As hairy explained earlier:

hairykrishna said:

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.

PS thanks for posting this, it answered my question really well

[marksx]

I'd love to enter a robot into one of these competitions.

Unfortunately, a lack of time, money, engineering skill and machine tools makes it a no-no. That, and my idea is probably against the rules or impossible to build. Or both!

Anyway, I've never watched battlebots, so I've set the recorder up for Sunday.

[RizzoTheRat]

Having watched a few battlebots fights on youtube, I'm really surprised how many of them have exposed wheels, wheel damage seems to be one of the most common knockouts in Robotwars.

[ClockworkCupcake]

Well, I enjoyed it on the whole. It is everything that Top Gear could have been - it retained what made the previous incarnation good.

Dara was an ok host, but lacked a lot of the bombast of Craig Charles. I thought Angela Scanlon was rather meh, and seemed to start every single bloody interview with "just talk me through..." which, as I've mentioned before, irritates the hell out of me.

I hope that it gets another series, and I hope that they give entrants more than a few weeks to prepare for it. The whole thing felt incredibly rushed and amateur as a result and I don't think it is fair on the roboteers to give them so little time to prepare.

But, all that aside, I thought it was a very welcome return.

[OwenK]

RizzoTheRat said:

Having watched a few battlebots fights on youtube, I'm really surprised how many of them have exposed wheels, wheel damage seems to be one of the most common knockouts in Robotwars.

That and the fking Link falling out. (Safety device in the electrical system so the techs can be sure the robot is totally disabled outside the arena)
They should have a rematch battle for robots knocked out by Link failure.

[RizzoTheRat]

I did notice one team say they'd gaffer taped the link in place for their next fight

[AlexS]

I did wonder if that was legal. There was a situation in one of the earlier seasons where it took two guys with a crowbar to lever the safety link out. They don't want a situation in which the robot cannot be made safe, especially if it has one of the more damaging weapons.

[PanzerCommander]

Possibly is, a bit of gaffer tape might stop it being shaken or vibrating loose, but a sharp tug will still separate it and render the robot dead.