Robotwars the Beginnings
February 1998 and Robotwars hits our screens for the first time in the UK. A show in which machines built by teams of individuals come together to battle for the ultimate prize of being crowned Robot Wars Champion.
Originally the brainchild of American Marc Thorpe, Robot wars was created after he unsuccessfully tried to build a radio controlled vacuum cleaner. In 1994, Marc Thorpe held the first competition at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.
In 1995 production company Mentorn acquired the worldwide television rights and began work on a pilot episode for the UK. The pilot convinced the BBC to commission a series. The first series of Robot Wars in the UK was broadcast over six weeks in early 1998 and was an immediate hit, with more than 2 million viewers, and a further 27 episodes were commissioned by the BBC that year. 155 episodes were produced in total, and the show was seen in 26 countries.
February 1998 and Robotwars hits our screens for the first time in the UK. A show in which machines built by teams of individuals come together to battle for the ultimate prize of being crowned Robot Wars Champion.
Originally the brainchild of American Marc Thorpe, Robot wars was created after he unsuccessfully tried to build a radio controlled vacuum cleaner. In 1994, Marc Thorpe held the first competition at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.
In 1995 production company Mentorn acquired the worldwide television rights and began work on a pilot episode for the UK. The pilot convinced the BBC to commission a series. The first series of Robot Wars in the UK was broadcast over six weeks in early 1998 and was an immediate hit, with more than 2 million viewers, and a further 27 episodes were commissioned by the BBC that year. 155 episodes were produced in total, and the show was seen in 26 countries.
The History of Team Iron-Awe
Team Iron-Awe the early days
After watching the first 2 series of Robotwars we decided to apply to take part in the series. However due to a delay in receiving the rules and other commitments we missed out on the deadline for Series 3. We spent the time coming up with a design. We opted for a tracked drive for our Robot with height adjustable suspension to give us improved grip and allow us negotiate obstacles and our weapon would be a large axe.
How (not) to build a robot....
Building a robot from scratch is not a particularly easy thing to achieve, especially when you only have the rulebook and a TV program for inspiration. For us the mechanical design and construction of the robot was a relatively straight forward process due to an engineering background and contacts in the industry to help out. The electrical side was slightly more tricky as none of the team had any experience in this area. We ordered parts based on the suggestions from Robotwars. 40 mhz dual conversion radio gear, 2 Bosch 750w motors, 4QD ncc70 speed controllers and Hawker SBS15 sealed lead acid batteries. All the radio channels had to be protected with failsafes and we connected the radio gear to the potentiometers on the speed controllers with servos. All this sounds very archaic now when there is a wide range of high quality speed controllers around that just plug straight into the receiver, but back then it was the only option unless you could afford a Vantec!
The weight limit for a heavyweight robot was 80 KG (it changed after series 5 to 100 KG) which sounds like a lot but it proved the hardest rule to comply with. We ended up dramatically shortening the robot to try and save weight. Off went the wedge front and about 6 inches off the back. The height adjustment for the tracks was scrapped and we ended up drilling holes in just about everything to try save a bit more weight!
Series 4 Qualifying - Robot Mayhem
We drove up to Park Street Studios near St Albans for the qualifying round and we were told that we would have to win a couple of fights to qualify. However, in our one and only fight we managed to disable Bolt from the Blue by hitting their main kill switch with our axe. This obviously impressed them and we were told we were through!
Robotwars Series IV:- Heat D
Back up to Park Street Studios for the filming and the first round was a three way Mêlée between Mortis, Mazakari and ourselves. Mazakari got tangled up in Mortis' lifting arm and after a judges decision they were eliminated. We were lucky to progress through as near the end of the battle our batteries died and Sir Killalot picked us up and almost dropped us in the pit.
In the second round we came up against the 7th seed Steg2. After a close fight where we got in several good blows with our axe and they flipped us, our batteries started to die again and Sir Killalot cam in and chopped our axe off. After a judges decision Steg2 was announced as the winner. We found out later that the drive problems we had experienced were down to dodgy batteries!
Robotwars Celebrity Special
After returning home from the 4th wars we had a phone call from the producer inviting us back to compete in the Celebrity special that they were filming. We were to be teamed up with Natalie Cassidy from Eastenders.
Robotwars Series V Qualifiers
Series 5 qualifiers saw Robot Wars hit the road. We travelled to the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham to fight for our place in the main show. This would be
Robotwars Series V
As I mentioned above the 5th wars were filmed at Elstree Studios in London. Our heat featured Wolverine, RoboChicken, Wheely Big Cheese, Granny's Revenge, Crushtacean, Supernova and Behemoth and Axe-Awe of course. Our first battle against the chainsaw wielding granny saw us struggling with steering problems but then Sgt Bash hit Granny's Revenge with his flame thrower and the poor old dear went up in smoke!! After that we managed to get Granny's Revenge down the pit closely followed by Refbot!!!
Our next battle against Wheely big Cheese will probably go down in Robotwars history... but for all the wrong reasons!! Still hampered with control problems and a slight leak in the pneumatics we entered the area. The bout didn't last very long, we managed to get in one hit with the axe before WBC flipped us from the middle of the arena clean out. It is quite amazing having seen it on television how high the robot went and what was even more amazing was that after hitting the barrier at the edge of the area, bouncing off and sliding down the outer protective screen ending up on the camera tracks was that we came out virtually undamaged. Well if nothing else we will be remembered as the highest flying robot in Robotwars!!
Robotwars Extreme
After sitting around at Earls court for two days we eventually filmed our Wildcard Warrior battle at Elstree studios after Series V. We were originally due to battle Mortis but as they were unable to attend Panic Attack stood in. The fight started well but we ended up stuck on the top of panic-attack whilst they drove over opened the pit and then unceremoniously dumped us in!!
Series VI Qualifiers (June 2002)
This event was held at RAF Newton a disused air force base in Nottinghamshire. For the first time the qualifying consisted of a four-way melee where the winner was guaranteed a place in Series VI. There would of course be a few discretionary places but not many so the pressure was on to win the fight. Now, I am not the biggest fan of mellees, as whilst they might be good to watch, they are far to unpredictable and you can quite easily be taken out by a robot whilst you are busy fighting one of the others. This would be the first real outing for our new robot Iron-Awe 2.0. and it had been a bit of a rush to get it finished in time. Now we were slightly apprehensive when we found one of the robots we were up against was Dantomkia, a robot that had had never appeared in Robotwars before but was well known to us on the live event circuit. We were right to be apprehensive as before too long Dantomkia had somehow managed to stand us up on our back with our axe hanging over the perimeter barrier of the arena. So try as we might we couldn't do anything to self-right. So we left dejected convinced that there was no way they would give us a place, only for them to phone us later in the evening to say we had got in.
Series VI ( 2002)
With Iron-Awe 2 finished and tested we hoped we would finally have a competitive robot. Unfortunately however, Series 6 was actually our worst ever performance as we exited the arena in the first round courtesy of Chaos 2's flipper.
Extreme 2
Series VII (Saving the best to last – well almost!)
Series 7 was the last series of Robotwars to be filmed in the UK and it proved to be our most successful. The show had moved to Channel 5 after the BBC had decided to axe the show and with this change came a change in presenter as Jayne Middlemiss took over from Philippa Forrester.
Life after Robot Wars
The live event scene had grown alongside Robot Wars but it wasn't until the TV show's demise that it really took off. The creation of Roaming Robots and later on Robots Live by groups of roboteers provided a safe environment for the robots to compete in and a way for the fans to watch their heroes compete.
Robot Rumble 2007
2007 proved to be the turning point for Team Iron-Awe as we won our first competition!