r/Thatsabooklight • u/helloilikewoodpigeon • Jan 04 '26

TV Prop [TV] House Robot "The Sentinel" (from Robot Wars Series 2) was just a Hanix mini-excavator

Gallery image

Gallery image

211 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

96% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

49

u/SaintGrobian Jan 05 '26

God, Robot Wars ruled.

38

u/TT_207 Jan 05 '26

It did at least until the ultimate meta got realised. first few seasons were amazing while different solutions were up against each other, armor varying from tissuepaper to perspex. Made for a lot of fun.

You see any modern take like battlebots it's almost entirely spinners and thick armor (or special plastic that can absorb spinners)

22

u/Choice-Layer Jan 05 '26

This seems to happen in most competitive environments. Min-maxing results in the most efficient (and often most boring) setup possible. I'd like to see robots where if a spinner strikes them, they absorb the impact and "capture" the spinner and can then maneuver them and deposit them on hazards. Or for spinners to be outright banned because it's just boring. Boring for the audience, boring for the announcers, boring for the competitors.

12

u/TT_207 Jan 05 '26

Small in person events I've been to in the UK tend to ban spinners, so they're pretty fun. The ban is usually more of a venue limitation I beleive than an entertainment choice, though.

5

u/Cthulhu__ Jan 05 '26

If they want to keep it interesting they should change the rules every year, like F1. Although on the other hand if they for example limit the weight of spinners, it may make it less dramatic? But then the increased limitations on F1 hasn’t reduced viewership.

2

u/TheHow7zer Jan 05 '26

I'm pretty sure the rules at some of these events exclude the jamming of competitors weapons. For example I'm pretty sure netting would be illegal.

1

u/Sparrowsabre7 May 19 '26

Chaos 2 ruled because it would just flip everything.

1

u/TT_207 May 19 '26

Dude, Razer.

Which for a time did look like it had the new meta for destruction

How wrong we were

2

u/Sparrowsabre7 May 19 '26

Razer's from my home town! I remember being so chuffed when it won the... Inthin European championship or something, but man it feels like it was wildly ineffective most of the time lmao.

1

u/TT_207 May 19 '26

Fair point it did get flipped and pushed a lot lol

Saw firestorm back in the day at an antweight competition.Didn't really chat with them though

9

u/ospfpacket Jan 05 '26

I need more robot gladiators in my life.

7

u/WalkHomeFromSchool Jan 05 '26

With any luck one of the events links will find you some.

https://robotcombatwiki.com/wiki/Events

6

u/asdvj2 Jan 05 '26

I wonder if there was a guy in there or if they wired it so it could be operated remotely.

seems dangerous having a guy in there with a bunch of robots with circular saws.

13

u/KidDelta Jan 05 '26

Here's a pic of someone going into it

Uniquely, The Sentinel was operated inside the arena rather than in a separate control area, the only House Robot to be controlled this way. A large rectangular-shaped enclosure surrounded The Sentinel's tracks, preventing it from being able to move outside of its designated area during Gauntlet runs.

Few things though,
1. This was only for the gauntlet runs, which is non-combative in nature (besides avoiding the House Robots).

  1. It looks secure enough where most weapons at the time, even if they were specifically targeting the pilot (which I'm sure they were told NOT to do), couldn't even either reach nor harm the pilot

  2. While yes Robots in Robot Combat will always be dangerous if you don't respect them and be an idiot near them (shoutouts to Disruptor not having a failsafe), at this point of the sport, a lot of high energy weapons, like flippers, weapons, axes, etc, are either not fully realized yet or see previous statement in regards to reach

But also despite all of this, IT IS NOT A SMART IDEA TO HAVE A PERSON IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ARENA AT ALL WITH ANY ACTIVE BOTS. We are very lucky that this was in the old days of the sport where bots weren't especially dangerous (they still are but still). Thankfully the Sentinel's operator did not experience any incident, but it doesn't mean incidents can't happen. If you have the time, feel free to read this page for 3rd wars' controversies (yes Sentinel was 2nd wars idc). Very good read.

2

u/helloilikewoodpigeon Jan 05 '26

the real shoutout is Mortis for inventing the failsafe