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.

It looks small...

[tshak]

... but it weighs in a 315lbs and has an impact of 10,000 ft lbs... YIKES!

Direct Ebay auction link

[sheetsda]

Did I miss something? wheres the direct link in the story?

Anyway, the auction is here [ebay.com]

Re:These aren't robots

[Xibby]

So what was it NASA sent to Mars again? Have a dictionary.com definition of [dictionary.com]
robot:

robot (rbt, -bt)
n.
1. A mechanical device that sometimes resembles a human and is capable of performing a variety of often complex human tasks on command or by being programmed in advance.
2. A machine or device that operates automatically or by remote control.
3. A person who works mechanically without original thought, especially one who responds automatically to the commands of others.

I'd say the vehicles on Battle Bots qualify. Now if you think AI design is easy, why don't you go program one?

Re:These aren't robots

[Mister Transistor]

They tried something like what you are suggesting. Instead of interesting it proved to be, as the English say, "a crashing bore". The truly autonomous robots had to take the time to map the arena area, and search around for the other bots hit-or-miss. Each match took MANY hours to complete, most a draw. Yawn!

Championship Controversy

[RainMan496]

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.

Re:Production values seriously lacking

[fireant]

An interesting tidbit about Robot Wars, which some probably already read on Slashback [slashdot.org]. Just in case not everyone checked this link [robotcombat.com] that has a timeline on the history of Battlebots/Robotica/Robot Wars.

In case you don't want to check the link, Robot Wars ® was actually begun by an American (USian, Ussie, whatever), Marc Thorpe, in California where the first few competitions were held. Of course, he had to get some funding from some Big Evil Corp (tm) who went behind his back to film the TV event in the UK, back in '97*. Several lawsuits later, the SORC (Society of Robotic Combat) was formed to get away from said Evil Corp and (the name) Robotica was born, after that, Battlebots.

This is a great simplification, so I encourage you to check that link, also check marcthorpe.com [marcthorpe.com] for a more in depth early history of Robot Wars.

If you're more interested in Battlebots, check out this FAQ [robotcombat.com]. Very interesting stuff, IMO. Makes me want to run out to the garage and start tinkering. :)

* This doesn't mean that I don't like Robot Wars, it's just a little behind the scenes action you may not be aware of.

Re:power requirements

[Alex_FireStorm]

WEll the Hawker genesis batteries are quite popular here in the UK for robotwars (we use panasonics but thats becasue we get them free), they are rated at 17Ah and so could supply 300A for 3 minutes (possibly a little longer). Also the motor is unlikely to be drawing 300A continuously. I would imagine once the weapon is spun up, unless it is very unbalanced (not likely looking at the quality of machining on the thing) then the current requirements would be much less.

Alex
http://www.firestorm2.co.uk

p.s. Design is different from building, if you don't design your build goes wrong see our robot groundhog for an example of not what to do, and Firestorm for a robot we actually spent ime desiging.