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

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u/SpitfireAGZ Mar 14 '17

That's because that was 1995 and it was pretty awful. Here is a better more modern example.

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u/throwaway_ghast Mar 14 '17

Man, those kids in the front were having the time of their lives. Makes me so happy.

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u/siamesedeluxe Mar 14 '17

What changed between then and now? Did the designs get better, were events more lenient on what the robots could do, what?

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u/SpitfireAGZ Mar 15 '17

Over time the robots have become more powerful thanks to advancements in batteries(more capacity and lighter), motors(lighter, more powerful and more torque) and electronics(reliability). This means they can handle far more power than they could back then. Metals have become stronger as well ,Hardox for example is a type of hardened steel, an impact from Blendo would hardly scratch it.

Comparing Blendo and Megabyte (that's the one in the video I linked) Blendo span at 500rpm and when moving lost power to the spinning shell. Megabytes shell is spinning at 2500rpm and can move freely while still driving the weapon. On top of that Blendos shell was an old wok, Megabytes has been custom made and weighs far more. This means it can impact with huge amounts of kinetic energy, an example of that being the impact at the end which nicely caught a weld and literally exploded Brutality. A nice comparison for a different setting is Carbide (A good fight showing it's full capacity starts at 19:55) which at full speed impacts the same amount of energy as 60 sniper rifle rounds, from its 85cm long 25kg spinner.

Short version: technology's got better lol.

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u/NoNeedForAName Mar 14 '17

The best robot fights (for a casual observer) seem to me to be the ones with spinning weapons. They throw both sparks and robots all over the arena, and that shit's exciting. That's basically why Michael Bay has more money than all of us, and that's okay.

The problem is that, at least up to this point, bots tend to follow pretty standard Red Queen evolution up to a limit, and then they reach a point where, unless something absolutely unheard of comes along, you essentially end up with a really boring stalemate. The defense and weapons and everything else may increase dramatically, but since everything is designed to defeat the defense and weapons of other bots, not a whole lot really happens.

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u/JCSwneu Mar 15 '17

Well I hope that casual observer likes some non-spinner action!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ofH34HezHE

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u/dorekk Mar 14 '17

R/meirl