Robot Wars is coming back

[FiF]

ClockworkCupcake said:

FiF said:

Seeing as most of the other spinner robots do as much damage to themselves if they make a solid attack, why does Carbide seem to not do this?

Looks like it is much better designed for a start.

Ok genius, care to expand?

But seems to not fling itself all over the place, seems far more stable. Has to be more to it than that.

[ClockworkCupcake]

FiF said:

Ok genius, care to expand?

It was just a general observation. There's no need to be a dick.

FiF said:

But seems to not fling itself all over the place, seems far more stable. Has to be more to it than that.

Dunno. You're the one with all the answers, it seems.

[AshBurrows]

Everything is bespoke and cut from billets. Check their Facebook out.
Also I think they have a clutch on the spinner and they power it down if they're about to come into contact with floor/wall/immovable thing where most people spin at full power and are surprised when stuff breaks.
They're also full time high level engineers with a lot of money and resource and not a couple of daft lads with an old wheelchair and some angle iron.
It's a great robot.

[SpamCan]

Anybody with access to the equipment to make bespoke motors for their weapon drive (that seemed hardy enough to last for the full event) clearly knows what they are doing. It looks well designed (loads of room around the weapon system to help prevent it getting jammed).

Carbide is an incredible bit of kit, it will be interesting to see what happens next week when it meets some of the other heavy spinners, the energy in that weapon is phenomenal.

I also couldn't stop laughing when the cluster bot was flung across the arena and bust the wall

[Evangelion]

Good idea to have the two equal-sized robots, rather than one big one and lots of ineffective little ones, but I couldn't help the feeling that neither was ever going to have a decent weapon.

[gtidriver]

Carbide V Tombstone, which one would win??

[AlexS]

Well, Cobalt (which is Team Carbide) is competing in Battlebots so could happen. I don't know if that is Carbide with a new colour scheme and name, Carbide v1 or another new robot though.

[Dr Doofenshmirtz]

FiF said:

Seeing as most of the other spinner robots do as much damage to themselves if they make a solid attack, why does Carbide seem to not do this?

It's got a torque ring between the drive and spinner - very similar to what you'd find in an electric drill.
So as soon as the spinner encounters a predefined load (or impact), it disengages the drive so the energy isn't transferred into the body of the robot.
For something relatively simple to engineer it's surprising the other spinners haven't thought of adding one of these!

Example of what I'm talking about...

[FiF]

Thanks for the sensible answers to my question about Carbide, certainly a clutch could explain the lack of self immolation. Certainly they seem to have a better balance between the weight and energy of the spinner vs the rest of the bot. I also wondered about their driving technique, it seemed at one point that they weren't diving in for the really big hits but getting in close enough to make some contact and wear away with smaller repeated hits.

[hairykrishna]

Most of the half way decent spinners have some kind of torque limiter in the weapon drive train. You can tell the ones that don't because their weapon motors are knackered after one or two hits.

The difference with really good spinners seems to be the amount of thought and quality of engineering that goes into their weapon and weapon motor mounting. Carbides taken this to extremes by re-manufacturing their drive motor. It has a new casing machined from billet with shock mounts integrated in. There's basically no one simple reason it's good though - the answer is really 'it's built by two good engineers who've been building fighting robots for 10 years'

[MarkRSi]

Evangelion said:

Good idea to have the two equal-sized robots, rather than one big one and lots of ineffective little ones, but I couldn't help the feeling that neither was ever going to have a decent weapon.

I did wonder if it would have been more effective if hadn't bothered with the weapons, and just tried pushing the opposing robot into the pit/flame grill/floor flipper/house robots.

Carbide is certainly a good example of the importance of development time. Would make for better battles if the robots weren't mobilised after a couple hits/bumps, but oh no BBC we can't have that can't we...

[ClockworkCupcake]

I seem to remember that in past series of Robot Wars, there was a rule on Clusterbots that as soon as one robot had been immobilised then it was ruled an immobilisation. This meant that Clusterbots were just too much of a risk and hence rarely implemented.

I'm sure that in Sunday's show, one of the Clusterbots was completely immobilised (I think it was the small lump of cheese?) and they didn't start counting out the team. So has that rule changed?

[alock]

ClockworkCupcake said:

I seem to remember that in past series of Robot Wars, there was a rule on Clusterbots that as soon as one robot had been immobilised then it was ruled an immobilisation. This meant that Clusterbots were just too much of a risk and hence rarely implemented.

I'm sure that in Sunday's show, one of the Clusterbots was completely immobilised (I think it was the small lump of cheese?) and they didn't start counting out the team. So has that rule changed?

I think they said that 55% has to be disabled. Their robots were 54% and 46% of total weight.

[ClockworkCupcake]

alock said:

I think they said that 55% has to be disabled. Their robots were 54% and 46% of total weight.

Sneaky.

[Evangelion]

MarkRSi said:

Evangelion said:

Good idea to have the two equal-sized robots, rather than one big one and lots of ineffective little ones, but I couldn't help the feeling that neither was ever going to have a decent weapon.

I did wonder if it would have been more effective if hadn't bothered with the weapons ... :

Indeed, I've often wondered whether there's a case for a robot with no weapons, just a casing of thick steel armour, that will cause all the other bots to smash themselves to bits trying to damage it. Although I suppose you could say, particularly if it had a pointed front end, that the robot itself was then the weapon.

[Foliage]

Evangelion said:

MarkRSi said:

Evangelion said:

Good idea to have the two equal-sized robots, rather than one big one and lots of ineffective little ones, but I couldn't help the feeling that neither was ever going to have a decent weapon.

I did wonder if it would have been more effective if hadn't bothered with the weapons ... :

Indeed, I've often wondered whether there's a case for a robot with no weapons, just a casing of thick steel armour, that will cause all the other bots to smash themselves to bits trying to damage it. Although I suppose you could say, particularly if it had a pointed front end, that the robot itself was then the weapon.

I was wondering the same, but using a stainless pressed dome with no seams or welds and designed in such a way to roll back onto its wheels. Like a medieval helmet, so blows from above would glance off.

[AlexS]

Evangelion said:

MarkRSi said:

Evangelion said:

Good idea to have the two equal-sized robots, rather than one big one and lots of ineffective little ones, but I couldn't help the feeling that neither was ever going to have a decent weapon.

I did wonder if it would have been more effective if hadn't bothered with the weapons ... :

Indeed, I've often wondered whether there's a case for a robot with no weapons, just a casing of thick steel armour, that will cause all the other bots to smash themselves to bits trying to damage it. Although I suppose you could say, particularly if it had a pointed front end, that the robot itself was then the weapon.

They've banned weaponless robots. It's why Storm 2 ended up with its rubbish lifter as it was required to have a weapon.

[ChocolateFrog]

AlexS said:

Evangelion said:

MarkRSi said:

Evangelion said:

Good idea to have the two equal-sized robots, rather than one big one and lots of ineffective little ones, but I couldn't help the feeling that neither was ever going to have a decent weapon.

I did wonder if it would have been more effective if hadn't bothered with the weapons ... :

Indeed, I've often wondered whether there's a case for a robot with no weapons, just a casing of thick steel armour, that will cause all the other bots to smash themselves to bits trying to damage it. Although I suppose you could say, particularly if it had a pointed front end, that the robot itself was then the weapon.

They've banned weaponless robots. It's why Storm 2 ended up with its rubbish lifter as it was required to have a weapon.

From memory the very first series was won by a weapon less robot that was built just to survive and push other robots, it wasn't very exciting.

Just checked, Roadblock did have a small circular saw on the back but didn't use it in the final.

Interesting to note the first final had robots ranging from 11kg to over 80kg most were powered by nothing more than 18v drill motors.

Edited by ChocolateFrog on Wednesday 5th April 00:32

[ajprice]

Drone Clash. 'Battlebots with quadcopters' tournament set for December https://www.inverse.com/article/29862-droneclash-b...

[FourWheelDrift]

ChocolateFrog said:

From memory the very first series was won by a weapon less robot that was built just to survive and push other robots, it wasn't very exciting.

Just checked, Roadblock did have a small circular saw on the back but didn't use it in the final.

Interesting to note the first final had robots ranging from 11kg to over 80kg most were powered by nothing more than 18v drill motors.

Edited by ChocolateFrog on Wednesday 5th April 00:32

And it included manoeuvrability challenges like this instead of robot on robot action (phwoar). https://youtu.be/3pxkNik1xJI?t=160