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The Destructobot For The Man With Everything
bewert writes: "Heavy duty metal-ripping hardware is going up for auction on E-Bay next week. The "Son of Wyachi", winner of the Heavyweight Championship on Comedy Central's BattleBots, will be auctioned on E-Bay. The inventor, Terry Ewert, practiced on old washing machines while developing S-W's triple rotating metal meat grinder apparatus.
With a 12 hp. electic motor driving three hardened tool steel meat tenderizer points spinning at 71 mph, Son of Wyachi quickly renders most objects into smoking ruins. A must have for your next Halloween bash!" Auction aside, this is a scary robot. Do not use near kids, pets, or anything you like intact.
As a proud frenchman I insist that you rude Americans remove your silly "battlebots" from our ebay. This is clearly a weapon of malicious intent that represses innocent robots and gives robots around the world a bad name!
I send it to do battle with the evil Hilary Rosenbot of the RIAA! She doesn't stand a chance!
GAME ON.
Of course, it is somewhat tough to take the anchors very seriously -- they've got this "God, put me anywhere else, even Fox Sports" look in their eyes the whole time.
It'd be really nice to see them expand the rules somewhat to allow more interesting weapons, however. I'm getting sick of seeing bots push or flip each other -- I want to see sparks and flying metal. Of course, they'd probably have to move that away from the audience, but I think it'd be worth it.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Anyway, the auction is here
These are radio controlled cars.
If the machines had to be totally autonomous, now that would be interesting.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
The inventor, Terry Ewert, practiced on old washing machines while developing S-W's triple rotating metal meat grinder apparatus.
Just because it was an Old washing machine, does 1) make it his to destory 2) mean that it doesn't funcation correctly.
Grrr, you know how hard it is to get a date when you clothes smell funky?
and while we are on the subject, what about the $250 for his half of the security deposit and where the hell is my dog?
He better sell that dam machine, he owns me a ton of cash that deadbeat roommate from hell.
Grrr
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Does the video game come out? I'm thinking a game along the lines of that old (Commadore?) game where you "built" monsters and faught other monsters.
Anyone who saw the finals knows what I'm talking about here. The refs called a knockout against Biohazard while both bots were still moving. They decided to send it to the judges from there. This would have been fine, except at the time, one of the braces which keeps the pounding mechanisms at constant distances from one another had come off at one end, so the bot was just spinning beneath it's stationary weapons frame. The odds that Biohazard would have been able to overturn it seem fairly likely. I don't know about anyone else, but I would still like to see a rematch, though I realize this is now impossible.
Those earlier vehicles with just two opposite rotating wheels that could only spin (and not laterally move) really sucked. They just sat there and waited for the other guy to come over and commit suicide.
You don't think this is just the same idea?
Personally these types of bots should be in a separate class -- there's no real point to trying to battle something with an impenetrable defense shield whirring around it waiting to hit anything with 10kf/p of torque. I'd classify this bot as purely defense. It can run around and defend. There's no real offensive tactic involved (spin up the rotor and attack? Please...)
I agree with some of the other posters -- the UK television show where the robots had to have good offense, defense and manouvre abilities was best. This show is simply "make it last and try to hurt the other guy" -- bo-ring.
Yikes. That sure is a $25,000 auction. Massivly over-priced if you ask me... What are the uses for such a machine? 'Bout all I can think of is silly destructive weekend adventures (can be done for cheaper), and competing in BattleBots. However, with this handy clause from the Auction Page:
This offer does not include rights to the name, ranking or image of the bot, therefore it cannot be entered into any future BattleBots competitions.
That kinda takes the competition thing away. But that begs the question, why are the auctioning it, and not competing it next season? I'm taking a guess here, but here's a quote from their FAQ:
5) Why build a walking bot?
The rules for Treasure Island allowed walking bots to be 50% heavier than the wheeled bots in each weight class. If you can design and build a walking bot that is maneuverable and somewhat fast, without adding much weight for the walking assemblies, you end up with extra weight for motors, batteries, and weapons.
...
7) Now that BattleBots changed the walking rules for the next competition what's next?
We were in favor of changing the rules so that there is no weight advantage for a walking bot. The cost of building a competitive walking bot is very high. We have a new design that uses wheels which will be much more destructive.
So, there you are...recouping costs on a robot they can't compete with next time anyway. I'm a bit disillusioned with Whyachi now...it's walker really didn't work all that well, but it gave 'em an extra 50% of weight. I wonder what the bonus is for a bot that doesn't move at all...(a valid strategy for a spinner like Whyachi)
Lend me this baby and two minutes at the local BMW dealer and I'll personally increase the viewing audience of BattleBots by an order of magnitude. Guaranteed.
"Revenge of the Lilliputians"!
hawk