The center of the arena sports 20-inch titanium saw blades called “killsaws” that emerge from the ground like the tigers in Gladiator. Each corner features a 30-pound stainless steel hammer called a “pulverizer” that is operated by one of the two teams. “These machines weigh 250 pounds, and they get tossed around like they’re made out of paper,” says Andrea Gellatly, the team captain of Witch Doctor, whose bot created so much upward force against Billings’s Tombstone in 2015 that Tombstone’s blade snapped into two pieces.Įven the arena is weaponized. There was even a flamethrowing drone that got bested by a garden rake. Those weapons can be featured on different designs, including pushers, grabbers, flippers, spinners, slashers, springs, wedges, thwackbots, lifters, crushers, and chuckers. There are saw blades, hammers, knives, axes, air cannons, clamps, jaws, drills, drums, catapults, and plows. BattleBots features dozens of remote-controlled robot gladiators-each weighing up to 250 pounds, costing tens of thousands of dollars to create, and constructed with military-grade hardware-attempting to destroy each other in a single-combat tournament by using an array of weapons that would make John Wick blush. The Discovery Channel premiered BattleBots Season 4 on Friday, and episodes will re-air on the Science Channel on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. The same applies to BattleBots, the robotic combat show akin to the UFC, WWE, and Formula 1 having a baby, and then that baby spending two hours a day watching Twitch and drinking Monster. “If you’ve never watched it live, it’s hard to put it in context how much energy is being unleashed.” “It’s an obscene amount of energy,” Billings says.

Billings vacuums his driveway to provide some peace of mind that he won’t harm himself or his loved ones, but the weapon is scary enough that he musters the courage to test it at home only once a year with the blade attached. Rocks, gravel, and anything else in the vicinity gets sucked into the air, and whatever hits Tombstone’s blade becomes shrapnel. Billings tunes it down to the BattleBots maximum of 250 mph in competitions (you know, for safety), but even at that slower speed, the blade is fast enough to create a wind vortex akin to standing behind a jet engine.

Tombstone’s blade, a 70-pound solid brick of aluminum, steel, or titanium depending on the matchup and its creator’s mood, spins up to 400 miles per hour at top speed.

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