Anyone remember Robot Wars?

Sorry I was thinking of Tornado 😉

Found Matilda hiding under some stairs in Gloucester last year, awesome piece of kit 🙂 There was a live show touring the UK recently that was pretty good. Lots of silly high powered gas flippers and less munchy munchy weaponry though.

Robot wars was great …. Would love to see it back on TV

I went to one of the Robot Wars roadshows on a work day out in the early 2000s. At that point it was pretty uninspiring sadly. Most of the matches were won by default when one robot failed to work at all or won on points after some very mild bashing.

It always seemed a bit unfair that the house robots obviously were allowed to be heavier and more powerful than the competitor robots. It was very entertaining when a competitor managed to do some proper damage to one of the house bots. 🙂

A shipping container was sold on Storage Hunters Uk on one episode that was full of the house robots, fact

Is that show not completely fabricated and scripted? The US version certainly is

Would love to see it back on TV

Switch on ChallengeTV most days…

Competitor robots were limited to 80-100kgs (I can’t remember which). Our robot smashed up Sir Killalot pretty badly and he weighed 500kg. They never showed that on TV

Uni flatmate was the driver of SMIDSY.

Some fellow rocketeers created another robot (forget the bot’s name) which missed out on auditions for one series, and I think got thru and competed in one or two later tv series, but there were a lot more meetups and contests than just the tv shows. They were in TechnoGames too, and ended up as consultants for that (the rocket cars).

When I was in Holland a group of colleagues started on a robot, but that was just as it was dying off as a TV thing.

I used to love robot wars. The bots were impressive but today they be even more savage with lipo power and brushless motors.

Took my boys to see the Robot Wars show in Glasgow (SECC)
Twas ace.

Absolutely loved it as kid when it was first on TV, I would have loved to build a robot but I think I was about 12 at the time and didn’t have any knowledge on how to get started or knew any adults to help me. I would draw loads of crazy contraptions in back of my school books.

Watched some of the repeats a few weeks back and it all seemed a bit meh until the semi finals. By that point all the badly built or useless ones had been cast aside leaving just good ones. If all the battles are like the video Duffer posted I would happily go and see it again.

Craig Charles : Red Dwarf , Robot wars and ‘DJ’ that loves getting out of his box on New Years eve

I really loved Robotwars, there would be long discussions in the pub after each episode, analysing what happened and coming up with designs and ideas for a robot. There were a couple of flippers that were pretty impressive, but Hypnodisc was probably my favourite, it’s sheer destructive capabilities against even the house robots was a thing of wonder, the carnage it inflicted on lesser robots was awesome.
In fact, the pub discussion usually centered around what you’d have to build that was proof against Hypnodisc’s onslaught.

I was only watching random episodes last week whilst off work. One of the leaders at my scout group was involved with team “Bulldog” and we had one of it’s shells hanging off the wall casually as you like. It was probably my biggest interest as a child watching it. Had that arena with the pull-back robots as mentioned, even a R/C model of “Shunt” which my brother broke before I even got to use it 👿 .

thank you all, I didn’t get enough sleep last night because I was watching robot wars clips on you tube till later than I should’ve. 🙂

We once had a very amusing conversation (whilst smoking weed) about covering a mate in tin foil, giving him a big hammer and putting him in the ring.

It was very weird when I subsequently (several years later) saw this…

Shit the bed
its coming back

Just goes to show the reach that STW has.

Was about to post the same thing:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/patricksmith/robot-wars-is-coming-back 😀

Is Jayne Middlemiss going to be on it?

Stoked for this, hopefully they don’t mess with the formula too much

99kg!

At 2:20ish if the timecode doesn’t work

Razer smooshes house robot Matilda

Flipped that 99kg like it was a 9.9kg.

The technological advances over the last 10 years are going to ensure that these machines are amazing. If it runs for a few years there will be plenty of people investing their time and resourses designing new machines too.

STW is much like the stonemasons, in many ways…

It’s being made in Glasgow, so it’s been announced that there will be a few changes- for one, to end the fight, the announcer will say “Errapolis!” instead of “Cease”.

i used to love watching it. i always wanted to enter and build one but i was too lazy and only one of my friends was interested and he was lazier than me.
favourite robots were razer, hypnodisc, pussycat and chaos 2…i would love to see a battle royal with all 4 of those robots in the arena at the same time.

however i always wondered why the razer and hypnodisc boys never bothered to provide more protection to their wheels as i recall that was their main weakness

The technological advances over the last 10 years are going to ensure that these machines are amazing. If it runs for a few years there will be plenty of people investing their time and resourses designing new machines too.

Thing is, it puts it out of reach of the norms. Dave and Pete from the pub don’t stand much of a chance when teams like Mortis rock up with a 40 grand robot. I do wonder if it needs a classification system; open up with a couple of budget rounds, finish the show with the expensive boys.

Thing is, it puts it out of reach of the norms.

I do agree, to an extent. However, the company that makes it are compelled to provide a good show for the audience. They are less concerned with providing opportunities for Dave and Pete from the pub.

Fantastic news about it coming back, the comment about technological advances in the last ten years or so, and whether that’ll put things out of reach of the small hobbyist team is pertinent, but it slightly ignores one massive advance that is now available to many people, and that’s 3D-printing, and also control systems like Arduino, plus electric motors have become ever more powerful, and Li-ion and Li-poly battery packs have also improved dramatically.
I have a feeling that the scope for compact machines with outrageous destructive power is within the reach of small teams with average financial resources; the crucial thing, as was the case with the original series, is the design, Hypnodisc and Razer weren’t terribly complicated, but what they did they did incredibly well.
Imagine Hypnodisc with a 150hp motor as used in cars like the Tesla! I have no idea if such a thing could be built, but ten years of development have got to make it feasible.
Bring it on!

Work annually run these for the local schools. Advise on and help make the robots. Generally enjoyed by all concerned.

I always wondered what the restrictions were, as you never saw any petrol motors or ballistic weaponry

Or flame throwers. That would have been pretty awesome…

Funnily enough, this morning(as the baby woke super early) I was watching the most recent series of battle-bots, the US version…
They have flame throwers, and the teams have a main robot and up to a couple of little bots!!

Tombstone just smashes everything up!!

DrP

What powered Razer’s jaw? It’s impressive. Dispatching house robot Mathilda:

Robot Wars regulations here:

http://www.snugglebot.co.uk/docs/rulesnregs.pdf

Looks like petrol engines were allowed, wonder why you never saw any. No flame throwers or electro magnets, ballistics must be on a 2.5 metre tether

I seem to remember there were a few machines running internal combustion engines; including Typhoon from up there ^^^.

I think they are quite difficult to impliment reliably, which meant they were never very popular.

Just announced as presenter..

So all comments will start with errrrrgghhh !

He’s apparently going to be accompanied by Angela Scanlon so it’ll be an all irish affair