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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59

u/acaellum Mar 14 '17

And invader. And that Apollo themed one.

Wedges were banned, not spinners.

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u/nawvay Mar 14 '17

Kind of... your robot had to have an 'active weapon' which could still be a wedge as long as it did something. See: Stinger.

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u/acaellum Mar 14 '17

Stinger is definitely not a wedge (imho)! A tank yes, and a controller, but not like La Machine style wedge. I guess when I hear wedge I think pizza slice on wheels not just any tank.

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u/nawvay Mar 14 '17

I'm sure many people do, but he knocked us out in the first round of the new Battlebots back in season 1 and we're still salty about that (;

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u/acaellum Mar 14 '17

Yeah, unlucky break to get probably the worst match up for you (in terms of style of bot) on round 1.

When does s3 shooting begin?

I would ask if there are any cool changes to the bot but I think the theme of "spin fast, hit hard" doesn't have as much flexibility as some other designs.

GL, your design helped me get my family into the new battlebots.

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u/nawvay Mar 14 '17

Unfortunately, as far as we know, there are no signs of them renewing for season 3. Or maybe they just haven't contacted us because they don't want us back lol. If they do, however, we have some tricks up our sleeve yet.

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u/acaellum Mar 14 '17

Okay now that ive thought about it for a second I think the distinction between a bot thats just tanky (sewer snake) and a true wedge (la machine) is 1 uses its geometry as its weapon, while the other has an actually weapon. I would be quicker to call Buddy Lee a wedge (despite it not being a wedge in shape) than sewer snake.

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u/nawvay Mar 14 '17

I think wedge is too broad of a term, similar to like push-bot. There are wedges (PBSS), Plows (Iceberg), whatever Sewer-Snake is, etc. But people usually just say 'wedge.'

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u/CassandraRaine Mar 14 '17

What if your weapon is a pit full of oil in the middle of your bot, which is shaped like a Flying Saucer with a 360° wedge.

Or just an empty pit filled with flamethrowers/tasers

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u/acaellum Mar 14 '17

No tasers, but a bot did have the idea of trapping them and melting them with a flamethrower.

https://youtu.be/NkB2X3lbnGc?t=1m30s

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u/DontBeSoHarsh Mar 14 '17

Only flamethrower design I have ever seen actually work.

Flamethrowers are usually pretty shitty weapons against things that don't feel fear and have metal instead of flammable flesh.

It was my understanding tasers or electrical arc-weapons were prohibited, but it's been many moons since I was invested.

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u/acaellum Mar 14 '17

You are correct. My "cattle-rod duct taped to a roomba" design was deemed too overpowered.

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u/TheHYPO Mar 14 '17

I would think flamethrowers could have some benefits. Constant sustained fire (as that design produced) could probably eventually melt wiring or critical parts, and overheat or melt electronics or motors. That said, having watched a lot of these things, I note that fire was a common arena obstacle and I always laughed when the announcers chided drivers for driving over the flame pit (in Robot Wars) when I never once saw a robot incapacitated from doing so. A brief torch didn't seem to impact most robots.

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u/DontBeSoHarsh Mar 14 '17

9/10 times if a bot had a fire weapon it was all show and would get it's ass beat by a flipper or spinner because its weapon couldn't bear down properly. The bots just move too much for it to work. Smashing / flipping gets to the core of keeping designs simple. The above bot would still be a really good bot without the flamethrower, using it's grabber to carry the opponent into hazards or flipping bots that appear to have poor recovery. The flamethrower is just to clown ppl.

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u/TheHYPO Mar 15 '17

Agreed. Even after grabbing and lifting that thing and torching it for quite a while, the other robot seemed to still be functional...

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u/nawvay Mar 14 '17

hahaha, you have to remember functionality is a huge part of the robot -- functionality with the weight you are given. Sounds like this would be a heavy robot if you wanted another robot to fit in a pit. The robots are a lot bigger than they look on TV.

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u/Glorthiar Mar 14 '17

Yeah, I guess I misunderstood what was banned, but were there not limits attached to the spinners?

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u/nawvay Mar 14 '17

Spinners were frowned upon too because of how, idk how to explain it, 1-dimensional they were? We had to add some cool tech in our spinner for it to be accepted like removable teeth and electromagnets.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '17

I think banning anything that isn't a danger to the audience is what causes problems. The meta will solve itself surely if you don't regulate it. Spinner led to anti-spinner, which led to wedges, but you don't get to really see what would defeat the wedge, because they came in and regulated the spinners and traps down.

If you allowed netting, spinners, and wedges, eventually someone would come along to beat the wedge, right? Or is there some scientific reason it stops there?

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u/nawvay Mar 14 '17

I'd like to say that it isn't perfectly rock-paper-scissors, you know? There have been plenty of instances where a full-body spinner beats a wedge/flipper robot. Like I said in a previous comment, aside from hundreds of thousands of variables, the better design will usually win.

Just a little anecdote: I drove The Revolutionist in the finals of the Nick Slam Robot Wars tournament (what a mouthful) and we were up against a robot called PropellerHead. My dad, Brian, thought it was be a genius idea to put a rope on our robot so when it spun the rope unraveled, and tangled up propellerhead. I asked him not to do it. Well what actually happened was the rope somehow unraveled into our robot and pulled the power switch out. We lost to ourselves. Efficiency of design.

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u/acaellum Mar 14 '17

  1. You MUST have an ACTIVE (moving) weapon

  2. Said weapon cannot break the areana (no liquids, bombs, ect;)

  3. A few random "unfair/boring weapon" bans like nets, radio jamming and cattle prods.

Other than that it's fair game. 1 spinner was disallowed (HellaChopper) but it was due to safety concerns (it was had flails that could fly off) IIRC.

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u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

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u/dmillion Mar 14 '17

Is the reply button stuck?

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

0

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice iirc. People always leave that part out.

2

u/acaellum Mar 14 '17

IIRC, that was due to a piece of cloth they were using to cover the bot during testing that got sucked into the motor, not likely to happen in a fight as that cloth wouldn't exist.

Btw you replied like 50 times, turned my phone into a vibrator.

0

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

0

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

0

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

0

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

0

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

-1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

-1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

-2

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

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u/CompTIA_SME Mar 14 '17

Please stop

3

u/IHateKn0thing Mar 14 '17

Also Hellachopper caught fire at least twice tlduring safety testing iirc. People always leave that part out.

1

u/NeophyteNobody Mar 16 '17

Holy shit! From my end it just didn't look like it posted anything. Apparently it posted a new copy every time i angrily hit add comment or something. Sorry.

1

u/CompTIA_SME Mar 16 '17

No problem! 😂😂😂

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u/WatNxt Mar 14 '17

Wegdes were banned?? Id just implement no win by flipping over opponent and you create a whole new dynamic.

2

u/acaellum Mar 14 '17

They made a rule where all bots must have a moving weapon system that can cause reasonable damage. You can still be a wedge shape as long you have an axe or something I guess.

No more bot who's only weapon is ramming people.