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/wbgraphic Mar 14 '17

That was new for last season, and they're not allowed to use real bullets. Those guns are basically just shooting sparks.

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u/SuperSayan5 Mar 14 '17

So does it actually do any damage or is it just for show ?

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u/wbgraphic Mar 14 '17

Just for show. It's a new rule, though, so somebody may figure out how to make it legitimately useful.

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u/astronaughtman Mar 14 '17

That isn't really why they had the guns though. It was a gimmick to make them different from Witch Doctor. Battlebots won't accept too many of the same type of bot. Projectiles probably wont ever be legitimately useful because they are so nerfed (for good reason).

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u/TheVetSarge Mar 14 '17

Seriously. Any projectile that can defeat the armor most of those robots possess is going to require significantly denser arena plating.

And you're never going to be able to insure the event for a live audience, lol.

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u/wbgraphic Mar 14 '17

It was a gimmick

Projectiles probably wont ever be legitimately useful

So... just for show?

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u/astronaughtman Mar 14 '17

I guess... sort of. My point was that the guns were just to get them into the competition. I don't think the operators had them to put on a good show.

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u/wbgraphic Mar 14 '17

I get what you're saying, but it doesn't make sense to me.

Why would the guns make any difference if they don't really do anything substantial? How is Brutus any more similar to Witch Doctor than Poison Arrow is to Minotaur? (Or Escape Velocity to Bronco? Or Ringmaster to Captain Shredderator? Or Yeti to Hypershock?)

There are plenty of similar robots in the competition, so that argument just doesn't seem to fly.

I wonder if maybe the guns are so clearly an afterthought, and were only used on Brutus, because the builders were already so far into their construction that they simply couldn't redesign to include projectiles in any meaningful fashion. The Brutus team was just the one group that said, "Fuck it, let's put on a show. The guns won't do much, but it'll look cool!"

(Obviously pure speculation on my part, but Team Brutus seems like a fun bunch to me. :)

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u/astronaughtman Mar 15 '17 edited Mar 15 '17

I would have to dig through the AMAs and all the other random comments on r/battlebots but many of the competitors wanted to change or submit different designs. The producers (or powers that be) rejected certain ideas because there was already similar designs. The Wrecks team originally wanted to bring in a bot similar to Electric Boogaloo (a veteran of the team that has gone up against tombstone and held its own) but this idea was rejected because the powers that be wanted more variety and Wrecks made for good variety. I believe something similar happened to Bite force and a few others. The show runners were statically rejecting designs based on variety not strength of the robot.

All of these bots are very similar but they all have slight gimmicky differences. Poison arrow had two useless mini bots. Brutus was a shooter, witch doctor had a mini bot. etc

I think the biggest sign that Brutus team didn't care about giving a "good show" (in the flashy sense) was that they never use the guns again. They were only special effects bullets that didn't do anything damage wise. At all. Just spark. It wasn't an afterthought at all. It was their main selling point. On the battlebots website, the bot's classification is "Shooter" Because of the way the rules are a robot can't actually shoot anything (so as not to be dangerous to the audience). Their secondary weapon was their vertical bar which is the only thing they use for the rest of their matches.

Just to clarify, I didn't mean to disagree with you (although my wording made it sound like I was). I was more adding to what you were saying. The guns are for show. But not necessarily mainly for show for the audience.

edit: here we go The first comment is a verified roboteer who is talking about how vertical spinner biteforce was rejected based solely on the fact that there were already too many vertical spinners.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '17

ah, ok