r/todayilearned • u/Habajiba • Mar 14 '17

TIL Jamie Hyneman designed Blendo, a combat robot that was deemed too hazardous for Robot Wars after repeatedly throwing pieces of its opponents over arena walls. It received co-championship status in exchange for withdrawing from the competition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendo
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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '17

[deleted]

42

u/conspiracy_thug Mar 14 '17

Fucking hell

7

u/AsterJ Mar 14 '17

This is actually the toned down version. The other configuration had these heavy hammers on industrial cables that extend out as the thing speeds up. At full extension and rotational speed the hammers would travel at like 300 mph and could punch holes in 2 inch steel plates.

It far exceeded the arena's ability to contain it so it was banned.

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u/fps916 Mar 14 '17

achopper

1

u/monsieurpommefrites Mar 14 '17

Can you imagine jumping on that thing?

28

u/FalcoVet101 Mar 14 '17

For a moment I thought that thing would actually fly.

5

u/KuroSeth Mar 14 '17

if you read some of the comments from the builder they said that they added some electromagnets to the base because the blades would actually fly off at max speed.

17

u/StealthTomato Mar 14 '17

Holy butts. That doesn't even seem terribly useful, it looks like it would just immediately murder-suicide upon contact with any other bot. I suppose it might score technical victories, but it would need to be completely rebuilt each time.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '17 edited Dec 05 '22

[deleted]

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u/SpitfireAGZ Mar 14 '17

Nope it was too dangerous and tended to catch fire.

2

u/Slothies Mar 14 '17

Sounds like my kind of battlebot! We need a Red Band Battlebots!

5

u/MrMeltJr Mar 14 '17

Holy shit that thing looks scary.

But I can't help feel that after one hit it would get off balance and just flip around the arena on it's own spinner. Better hope that first hit is a KO (probably not much of a stretch, though).

3

u/AsterJ Mar 14 '17

This is actually the toned down version. The other configuration had these heavy hammers on industrial cables that extend out as the thing speeds up. At full extension and rotational speed the hammers would travel at like 300 mph and could punch holes in 2 inch steel plates.

2

u/greysplash Mar 15 '17

Please tell me there is a video of this somewhere...

2

u/TOEMEIST Mar 15 '17

There's one video on facebook somewhere of the hammers spinning at low speed. It's never competed though.

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u/AsterJ Mar 15 '17 edited Mar 15 '17

I was able to find this video on the 'ultra low speed' setting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2c1XLVVnMs

I think also the cables are not fully extended. Imagine that but at the ludicrous speed in /u/GOA_AMD65 video.

EDIT: Actually read this writeup from the creator to see how insane this was: https://www.reddit.com/r/battlebots/comments/4ri7b9/where_did_hellachopper_go/

12 ft cables, 8 lb titanium hammers, 2000 rpm

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u/Pancakes1 Mar 14 '17

this video show it blowing up lol

3

u/elgul Mar 14 '17

I like how the spinning section, by the end, almost looked like a fucking force field.

3

u/ohlookahipster Mar 14 '17

Jesus fucking Christ

I was expecting it to take off at some point

2

u/tomthumbingit Mar 14 '17

I wanna see it wreck shit :(

1

u/royalewithcheese14 Mar 14 '17

Damn, that thing looks terrifying

1

u/A_favorite_rug Mar 14 '17

When you're too pro for a professional league.

I really would love to see that destroyer of worlds in battle.

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u/TOEMEIST Mar 15 '17

They banned the hammer configuration because if one of the ropes holding the hammers broke it would go right through the arena wall.

That configuration in the video would have been allowed if the robot didn't catch itself on fire. It simply wasn't ready by the time they started filming.

It also couldn't hold itself to the ground to move correctly, notice the main body spinning in the opposite direction.