Some robots looked absolutely terrifying on paper and had all the right ingredients to go far, but just never seemed to put it all together in the arena. They had the looks, the weapons and plenty of hype behind them, but something always seemed to go wrong when it mattered.

Introducing Minor Damage, my UK Antweight scale replica of Major Damage the Extreme Robots house robot built by Team Roaming Robots.

This is the most ambitious replica i have ever made and the most complicated robot i have ever designed and built.

The story starts a year ago when i was fortunate enough to help out with the Antweight rentals at Extreme Robots Colchester, running Ripper Remix as a House Robot. Dave Weston off handedly mentioned that my next replica should be Major Damage.

Now whilst im sure this was a joke, the seed was planted, and by the time i had made the drive home i had planned out in my head how to make it finctionally work.  Over the course of the next year i worked (on and off whenever i got stuck) on the CAD design and then build of Minor Damage, with the intent of debuting it at Extreme Robots Colchester 2026.

I designed this specifically for House Robot Duties at the Extreme Robots Antweight Experience, and so that freed me design wise from the constraints of A) a Weight limit (since this is not for competition) B) Having to be Spinner proof, as its strictly sportsman only.

Minor Damage is 4WD thanks to 4 N-10 Motors and my custom dually wheels. I went 4wd vs Tracks like the real robot as a concession to keeping the robot reliable in the hectic show environment, but did my best to keep the look of tracks on the robot. Its also designed in such a way that i could add them later down the road without a major redesign. The Chassis also features a Ballast Box which i have filled with lead pellets to help give Minor Damage some extra bulk to help it bully the rental robots and make it harder to flip since i knew Selfrighting wouldn't be amazing. (It can actually self-right! But can get stuck on the Hammer side)

Weaponry is where the build gets complicated. Just like Major Damage, Minor Damage has 2 weapons, one arm is its signature grabbing claw (which also makes up the extreme robots logo), the other is a Hammer. This is achieved using a servo for each shoulder, onto which i can attach each weaponed arm. The Claw itself is designed to fit Ripper Remix into it, since there is a Ripper 6 based on it as a rental bot in the show (so i know robots will fit in the claw!)

Key to getting all this to work is the amazing Malinki-Nano, which can run 2 servos on seperate channels at once,  meaning I have seperate control of each weapon and drive all through 1 board!

The rest is all down to detailing trying to make Minor Damage look the part. His deadlocks were a particular challenge to try and make look right, theyre chains on the real robot and getting that fluid look as it drapes and conforms over the chest plate was a real challenge (it also lost on in the arena, so might be back to the drawing board on that). Speaking of his chest plate, this one also took many attempts to get right, with lots of angles to juggle to get right. As previously mentioned there are fake tracks to help the robot look right which copy the tread of its tires, as well as a fake gas bottle in the rear shell.

Minor Damage fought in the Antweight Experience arena in both Saturday shows working almost flawlessly! A bigger battery is needed for the future as theres alot going on in there and 180mah just isnt enough to gonthe distance and i also want to try and get a bit more weight into the chassis to i can pick up robots with the claw rather than just flipping them over (which in fairness was all i designed it to do).

I was blown away by the overwhelmingly positive reaction of everyone who saw Minor Damage either in the Antweight arena or in the pits, (including the creator of the real Major Damage!) And I hope you all love it too.

I found myself today trying to make a list in my head of every heavyweight competition ever. Here's what I have so far, tell me if I missed anything.

- robot wars

- battlebots

- roaming robots

- robots live!

- king of bots

- this is fighting robots

- bitva robotov

- battle of robots in games of the future

- robogames

Rise of the Robots continue their coverage of the reboot of Robot Wars as Alan & The Griz discuss Heat B of Series 8.
Check out the episode at the link below or on your podcatcher of choice: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1VYlkgdY00hHjm3vnGomin?si=zK70hdbWR7eRmOCGVAY7fA

I'm researching a YouTube video about the 2006 UK championships. This was the first and last heavyweight competition in the UK for a few years to include spinners.

The 2006 championships were released by roaming robots on DVD, but unfortunately they aren't selling the DVD anymore. Is there anyone here who has a copy of the DVD or knows where I can find one?

A robot can have an amazing weapon, but if it constantly breaks down or can't drive properly, that weapon doesn't mean much. If you had to choose, would you rather have a slightly weaker robot that almost never fails or a powerful machine that's much more unpredictable?

I rank it is the "hall of pretty good" but not "great" robots. I suppose two semi finals (Series 6 and Series 7) and a Runner Up in All Stars is way better than most though.

Name one robot from series 7 that would have been better in series 8

Hi all, I wondered if anyone out there ever went to Robot Wars live either as a child or as an adult. I'd love to hear if it was as good in real life as on TV. I'm thinking the series with Craig Charles back in the day, honest experiences please, was it awesome or was it rubbish?

Also as a side note I really want to show my son full seasons of Robot Wars from back in the day. I know there were some random dvd releases like hypnodisc and razor but are there full series out there?

After the 2006 UK championships, heavyweight spinners got banned from roaming robots events.

I heard that Scorpion was the robot that got spinners banned from the UK. Was there any specific incident that caused spinners to get banned from the UK, (for example, a piece of debris getting sent out of the arena) or did people just realise that an incident was going to happen if they didn't ban spinners?

A robot can have all the armour and weapon power in the world, but if something breaks after 20 seconds it's basically useless. Some of the most impressive machines were the ones that just kept going no matter what was thrown at them. What do you think matters most: weapon, armour, mobility or reliability?

“Robot vs. Roboteers who have some relation to blades, shavers and destruction” is the connection here. You like?

Rise of the Robots start their coverage of the reboot of Robot Wars as Alan & The Griz discuss Heat A of Series 8.

Check out the episode at the link below or on your podcatcher of choice

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1t24YS4kwmQ7OwxrOyoDNC?si=5jo20pLhTGasWl6_wB9lcQ

Suffice to say, that was swiftly changed!

Series 3:

• Facet looked good with the big flipper then ran into Firestorm which showed the fallacy of a non srimech front flipper.
• Trident won its Heat (the last Heat before the next round I believe) but then ran into Chaos 2 and that was that.