Robot Wars is back after more than 12 years off-air. The new series brings together 40 teams of roboteers in a battle to flip, mangle and ultimately destroy one another.

Filmed inside a bulletproof polycarbonate arena in Glasgow, the show pits robots, and their human operators, against each other in battles that only end when one robot is destroyed, immobilised or dumped in the pit. Battles that go on longer than three minutes are ruled on by a panel of judges.

In the decade off-air technology has moved on: robots are now faster, more powerful and more robust.


Much has changed in the world outside of Robot Wars but the die-hard fans of the show, many who grew-up with the endless enthusiasm of hosts Craig Charles and Philippa Forrester, will not be disappointed by its reincarnation when it returns to BBC Two this Summer.

WIRED went behind the scenes as the new show was being filmed to see the carnage, broken metal and shattered engineers first-hand.

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The competitors

Robots come in all shapes and sizes. What is common between them is that they are all more capable and more advanced than the robots of the original show.


"The technology has moved on in the sense that the batteries are much lighter," says Noel Sharkey, a judge on the original Robot Wars who's back for the new series.

"The motors are better, more efficient and smaller so they can pack more in there. Also the armour they're using, it's this new thing called hardox, which is like a hardened steel, it's much lighter than titanium and much tougher."

Traditional four-wheeled robots with flippers are joined by the more creative and strange killing machines only found on Robot Wars.

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One of the more eccentric bots is Gabriel, which looks like a Segway but with an axe or spike where you'd normally find a person. The weapon is held between two wheels and flips forward and backwards as the robot is driven – if a nippy competitor wanted to (or was capable) it could drive between the wheels and under the weapon.


Spinners, spikes, and flippers are the standard weapons of choice, although they've come a long way since the red googley eyed Diotoir was set on fire multiple times. (The arena still has its pit, flames, spikes that get fired up from the ground and a flipper that flings robots meters into the air). The spinning disc on Pulsar, one of the robots competing in the new series, flies round at 9,000 revolutions per minute (rpm), the fastest in the competition. When in full flow the noise can be heard throughout the giant warehouse where the show is filmed.

BBC

Another competitor, Ironside 3, was created by a group of friends in a garage near Nottingham in just five weeks. "The weapon is basically a really big bar spinner," says Adam Lewis, an engineer who helped create the robot. "The bar is 25mm thick, its's nearly a meter long, and spins at around 1500rpm. The rest of it is a hexagonal box, the more angles you have the less spinners can hit you, they like to hit corners or big fat areas, we don't have any."

But precautions taken teams to stop their creations from being destroyed only work so far. Ahead of battles engineers tinker with their robots right until the last minute.

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In one battle a robot gets flipped from the arena floor; another battle forces filming to be stopped after a camera is smashed by a piece of flying metal; and two opponents almost fail to inflict any damage as they separately lose the ability to drive in a straight line.

'Old favourites'

Will Razer return to the new series of Robot Wars?

When the show's return was announced in January there was speculation about old champions returning to relive their former glory. The Razer team, at the time, said they were "interested" in bringing an updated version to the show.

"There are the old teams; the old favourites," says Robot Wars executive producer Andrew Robertson. While carefully not giving away any spoilers he hints that some of the older generation may not relive their past glory.

"Because the world has changed those old robots are slightly behind the times compared to the new ones. The ones that have been built more recently, the specifications are much better."

There is also a greater demand put on the robots and their crews over the six days of filming. Across the six, one hour, shows the robots battle through a group stage with the winners progressing through to knockouts and a final – where a champion is crowned. To be crowned champion a robot will have to be victorious in up to 12 separate fights.

"There's a lot more fights put in this show than there ever was before," says Lewis. "The machines are picking up a lot more damage."

However, the show is still as family friendly as it was a decade ago, when children and their parents cobbled together basic creations in garden sheds. Think Chaos 2 and its family team, which won two of the original finals. This time around the youngest competitor is a nine year-old-girl, who is accompanied by Glitterbomb.

Teams mix and prepare their robots around the pits and are interrupted by presenters Dara O'Brien and Angela Scanlon who alternate between working behind the scenes and interviewing competitors before and after fights.

House Robots

BBC

Matilda, Shunt, Dead Metal and the towering Sir Killalot all appear in the new series – the flame-throwing Sargent Bash has been dropped as the show only decided to bring back the "family favourites". Bash isn't the only robot not to make a return: Refbot, Mr. Psycho, Growler, and Cassius Chrome also don't make the new series.

The house robots have all be recreated, not a single part of them is the same as those that appeared more than a decade ago. They have also all doubled in size and weight.

"We knew the old house robots were not up to the job, they were in a right state. When you look at the technology leap from the previous series, the competition robots would have them in parts straight away," says James Cooper, whose Birmingham-based RoboChallenge recreated the four bots. Cooper has a history with Robot Wars: during the final throes of the Craig Charles era, the engineer joined the Razer team as an apprentice and worked on the show. In many respects he was the perfect match to oversee their recreation.

Sir Killalot weights three quarters of a ton, is half the height of a fully grown adult and can lift 40 tons with its left arm. The arm itself weighs more than the total weight of any of the competitor robots, which are limited to 125kg. It takes two people to operate each house robot: one to control and direct it and another to operate the weapons.

The undisputed king of the arena had its head designed and tweaked using 3D printing and 20mm thick steel on its front to stop competitors from attacking its insides. But Sir Killalot isn't necessarily the only show-built robot that competitors should fear.

"One of the most dangerous robots out there is Matilda; traditionally Matilda was seen as the host robot everyone could push around and was slightly a joke with a chainsaw at the back that didn't really do any damage," says Robertson. "Now its got a new spinning hardox wheel at the back, which if you get in the way of would smash anything."

BBC

Shunt weighs 300kg, up from 105kg, and its axe takes 0.06 seconds to hit its intended target. Dead Metal's circular saw spins at 4,000rpm and the robot has a top speed of 14mph and weighs 300kg.

Despite their heft, the house robots aren't infallible. Cooper says that during filming one has an internal fire that has to be put out, while in a separate fight more than one of the house bots get flipped and immobilised. The fight is reminiscent of the final in the third series of the original Robot Wars where Chaos 2 defeated Hypno-Disc before turning on Matilda and flipping it onto its side before flipping Shunt as well.

"One thing we knew before Robot Wars was we couldn't build house robots that wouldn't get flipped over, unless they weighed two to three tons," says Cooper. "The power you get in the flippers means it is unviable."


Let the wars begin.

The new series of Robot Wars will air on BBC Two later this year.

Updated: June 10, 3.30pm: This article has been updated to correct the name of the robot Glitterbomb.