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BattleBots is an American robot combat television series and company. The show is an adaptation of the American Robot Wars competitions hosted in the mid–late 1990s by Marc Thorpe, in which competitors design and operate remote-controlled armed and armored machines designed to fight in an arena combat elimination tournament. The same competitions inspired the British TV program Robot Wars, which acquired the name in 1995.
Robot Wars is a British robot combat television series created by Tom Gutteridge and Stephen Carsey which aired from 1998 to 2004 and from 2016 to 2018. The series involves teams of amateur and professional roboteers operating remote controlled robots to fight against each other in an arena, which features hazards and the heavier "House Robots" which are hostile to all combatants. The first two series also included assault and trial courses.
MythBusters is a science entertainment television series developed by Peter Rees and produced by Australia's Beyond Television Productions. The series premiered on the Discovery Channel on January 23, 2003. It was broadcast internationally by many television networks and other Discovery channels worldwide. The show's original hosts, special effects experts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, used elements of the scientific method to test the validity of rumors, myths, movie scenes, adages, Internet videos, and news stories.
James Franklin Hyneman is an American special effects expert who was co-host of the television series MythBusters alongside Adam Savage, where he became known for his distinctive beret and walrus moustache. He is also the owner of M5 Industries, the special effects workshop where MythBusters was filmed.
Robot combat is a type of robot competition in which custom-built machines fight using various methods to incapacitate each other. The machines have generally been remote-controlled vehicles rather than autonomous robots.
Hypno-Disc was a contestant entry in the Robot Wars TV series, and was one of the first robots permitted to use the kinetic flywheel weapon. Hypno-Disc's design, however, was somewhat basic, and its high ground clearance made it an easy target for robots armed with flipping weapons, such as Chaos 2. Hypno-Disc was the creation of the Rose family — twin brothers Derek and David, and their father Ken. It was the first competitor robot recreated in toy form when the Robot Wars pullback toys were released.
Razer is a combat robot that competes on the British television series Robot Wars. It was constructed by Simon Scott and Ian Lewis from Bournemouth; the team later expanded to include webmaster Vincent Blood. Razer was designed and constructed in 1998 to participate in the second series of Robot Wars, but subsequent modifications and improvements enabled it to remain competitive until its retirement after the second series of Robot Wars Extreme. Despite gaining a reputation for being unreliable, it was champion of the fifth series of Robot Wars, runner-up in the sixth, and won the first two Robot Wars World Championships.
Panic Attack was a robot that competed in the British television show Robot Wars. In Series 2, first broadcast in late 1998, it was just a box with a set of electrically powered lifting forks, powered by a homemade system. It was emblazoned with the image of a spider. The spider was the result of a school competition to come up with a design of something that made you panic. A 12-year-old girl designed the spider. With his prize money from Series 2, Kim built a newer machine. This one had a srimech, a new body shape, and more effective forks, which were capable of completely overturning opposing machines. The top-mounted self-righting mechanism proved to be unreliable, and was eventually removed. Added in Series 4 were a set of side "skirts" to prevent all but the lowest of robots from getting underneath it, as well as sloping sides. The fourth model had improved skirts, and the srimech was updated to a top flipper, which was the favourite with the driver Kim Davies, who stated it was, in his opinion, the best version.
Grant Masaru Imahara was an American electrical engineer, roboticist, and television host. He was best known for his work on the television series MythBusters, on which he designed, built and operated numerous robots and machines to test myths over the course of the show.
Robot Arena 2: Design and Destroy is a robot combat action video game developed by Gabriel Entertainment and published by Infogrames. It is the sequel to Robot Arena, in the Robot Arena videogame series. Compared to its predecessor, it has many new features, such as the Havok physics engine and fully 3-D environments.
Typhoon 2 was a robot in the UK television series Robot Wars, noteworthy for being the final champion of the show before it was cancelled. It was a full-body spinner with cutting claws. In two battles in series 7, in which it competed, it knocked out the arena wall, causing the match to restart. It was created by the 870 Dreghorn Squadron's Air Cadets from the Air Training Corps and was painted to resemble the RAF crest. It was named after the Eurofighter Typhoon. The team also had a three-time middleweight champion called Typhoon, a lightweight called Typhoon Thunder which also made Typhoon Twins with Typhoon Lightning, and a featherweight called Typhoon Cadet. Gary Cairns, the team captain, later ran a three-dimensional printing business and fought in the 2016 Robot Wars with PP3D, which reached the second round group stage in its heat. Then, it lost, ironically, to Storm 2 in the decisive battle, before losing at the same stage a year later due to control problems in its battles.
BioHazard is a combat robot built by rocket scientist Carlo Bertocchini. It was the most successful robot in the heavyweight division of BattleBots. It is still considered one of the greatest and most successful combat robots of all time. BioHazard's weapon is an electric four-bar lifting arm used to lift other robots. The lifting arm has been described as a type of shovel, scoop, or a forklift mechanism. For much of its reign, BioHazard was notorious for being difficult to attack and get under due to hinged titanium wedge skirts on all sides and the low profile effected by its 4.5 inches (11 cm) height. The robot weighs 208 pounds (94 kg) and has a surface area of 3 feet (0.91 m) by 4 feet (1.2 m).
HEXBUG is a brand of infrared and automaton toys developed and distributed by Spin Master. HEXBUG uses many elements found in BEAM robotics. First piloted in the US through RadioShack, HEXBUG is now sold in most major retail stores. The original HEXBUGs are based on six-legged arthropods but now come in several different varieties. The name "HEXBUG" relates to the six-sided packaging it is sold in, rather than to its number of legs.
Storm 2 is a robot that competed in the British television game show Robot Wars. It was a small invertible box-shaped robot with a wedge on the front. The robot was originally built with no weapons but the team was asked to add an active weapon in order to take part in the seventh series, so the team came up with a built-in lifting arm, very similar to the American robot BioHazard. However, it was not the weapon but the immense speed and power of the robot that did the most damage to its opponents, managing to throw The Steel Avenger out of the Arena in its Series 7 heat final. The robot competed in the seventh series of Robot Wars, winning The Third World Championship at the end of the series, having won the 16th seed into the competition by being victorious in the New Blood Championship of Extreme 2.
Robot Magazine was an American bi-monthly robotics publication produced by the Maplegate Media Group.
Tested.com is a website and YouTube channel that focuses on maker culture and technology. The company was started by Will Smith and Norman Chan in 2010, with MythBusters hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman joining the company in 2012. The channel has since been rebranded to Adam Savage's Tested, with Hyneman and Smith both no longer involved.
Robocraft is an online vehicular combat game developed and published by Freejam Games. The game is set on different planets, with players constructing robots to fight with and against others in battle. The game features contained garage bays in which players can build various functional vehicles with basic block-based parts, such as cubes and wheels, along with weapons that can be used for combat. The initial alpha build was released in March 2013, and gained over 300,000 players by the following year. It officially released out of beta on August 24, 2017.
Translational drift also known as melty brain or tornado drive is a form of locomotion, notably found in certain combat robots.
The twelfth season of the American competitive television series BattleBots premiered on Discovery Channel on January 5, 2023. This is the fifth main-line season of Battlebots to premiere on Discovery Channel and the seventh main-line season since the show was rebooted in 2015; official material markets this season as World Championship VII.
References
- ↑ "AdamSavage.com". Archived from the original on 2007-02-03. Retrieved 2007-02-06.
- ↑ 'Gearheads' by Brad Stone, ISBN 0-7432-2951-7
- ↑ Combat Robot Hall of Fame Archived February 24, 2007, at the Wayback Machine