Robot Combat - Unusual Weaponry

Unusual Weaponry

A very wide variety of unusual weapons and special design approaches have been tried with varying success and several types of weapons would have been tried had they not been prohibited.

• Entanglement Weapons - Several early US Robot Wars competitors sought to immobilize their opponents with entangling weapons. Nets and streamers of adhesive tape were both tried with mixed success. Entangling weapons were prohibited in Robot Wars and BattleBots from 1997 onward, but the Robotica competitions allowed nets, magnets, and other entangling devices on a case-by-case basis.
• Flame Weapons - Although prohibited for use by competitors in Robot Wars and BattleBots, the rules for Robotica and the Robot Fighting League do allow flame weapons under some circumstances. RFL super heavyweight competitor Alcoholic Stepfather and Robotica competitor Solar Flare employed gaseous flamethrower weapons. Flamethrowers are not effective weapons, but are audience favorites.
• Smothering Weapons – The BattleBots and Robot Wars lightweight competitor Tentoumushi used a large plastic sandbox cover shaped like a ladybug ("tentoumushi" being Japanese for ladybug) on a powered arm to drop down over opposing robots, covering and encircling them. Once covered, it was difficult to tell what the opponent was doing and who was dragging whom around the arena. One version of the robot had a circular saw concealed under the cover to inflict physical damage, another had a small grappling hook.
• Tethered Projectiles – Although tethered projectiles are specifically allowed and discussed in major rules sets, their use is quite rare. Neptune fought at BattleBots 3.0 with pneumatic spears on tethers, but was unable to damage its opponent. During a friendly weapons test, Team Juggerbot allowed the builders of Neptune to take a couple shots against their bot. One of two shots penetrated an aluminum panel below the main armor, while the other bounced off the top armor.
• Multibots (clusterbots) – A single robot that breaks apart into multiple, independently controlled robots has appealed to a few competitors. The Robot Wars heavyweight Gemini and the BattleBots middleweight Pack Raptors were two-part multibots that had some success. The rules concerning clusterbots have varied over the years, either stating that 50% of the clusterbot has to be immobilised to eliminate the robot from the tournament (In the Dutch version of Robot wars, there was a 3 part multibot named √3, and although one of its parts was tossed out of the arena by Matilda, the robot as a whole was still deemed mobile, and the other 2 parts of √3 did enough to win the game), or that all of a multibot's segments have to be incapacitated before a knock-out victory can be declared. Current Robot Fighting League match rules require the latter to be achieved.
• Halon Gas – Rhino Halon fought at the 1997 U.S. Robot Wars event with a halon gas fire extinguisher, which was very effective at stopping internal combustion engines. Gas weapons of this nature were promptly prohibited from future competitions.