Robot Combat Hall of Fame Entrants 2015

I feel it's about time I made a post about this. It's about time I made a post about anything really... so sorry for that. I'm just sort of making posts on a whim for now.

The Robot Combat Hall of Fame, for those who don't know, immortalises the greatest fighting robots of all time. Set up and moderated by Mark Joeger of Team Run Amok - the mind behind the first Robotica champion - the hall of fame takes on new robots voted for by the roboteering community around the world every 2 years, with full induction given to robots mentioned on at least 50% of ballots and honourable mentions given to those mentioned in at least 25% of ballots. Since its creation in 2003, the hall has come to include such names as La Machine, Nightmare and Razer in the inaugural class, with other great names like Last Rites, Explosion and The Judge being inducted later. To be fully inducted is the highest award in the world of robot combat (higher even than victory in a televised competition, even if it won't make you as famous) and to earn an honourable mention is absolutely no mean feat. Since 2015 is an odd year, a vote took place and a new collection of the finest robots has been added to the list, so who are they?

This year has seen five new robots included in the hall of fame. Two of these have been granted full induction.

Full Induction: Original Sin

This is an American robot which has stormed the annual RoboGames and Combots competitions. It might appear simple, with four wheels and a plain wedge, but it is no pushover - in fact it will usually be doing the pushing, and some more besides.

Here it is in 2012, the year they took their fourth RoboGames gold for combat.
It even looks aggressive just sitting there.
Source: http://combots.net/cup/cup-2012.php

Original Sin's angle is not one of damage. It is not fitted with a great spinning disc or bar. Nor is it built like a tank. After all, its wheels are exposed and it has flat, fairly unprotected sides. What Original Sin instead brings to the table is tenacity paired with near-suicidal aggression. Team Late Night Racing don't let off, no matter what they're up against. They just take it to the face and come back for more. Lost a wheel? It's fine, they have 3 more. Tossed high into the air? As long as they land they don't mind. This is all allowed by builder and driver Gary Gin's skill to make Original Sin incredibly reliable. It will take knocks. It will sometimes lose parts. But even if the tires are gone and the wheels aren't touching the ground, you can trust me when I say they'll still be spinning.

Full Induction: Rust In Peace

The second bot to earn full induction is one I know little about, I'm sorry to admit, so I probably won't do it justice. Rust In Peace, RIP for short, is an Indian robot and the first from its nation to be included in the hall. The honour is well deserved.

Rust In Peace (left) throwing Vikings into the air.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/riprobot/photos_stream?tab=photos_stream

Not only is Rust In Peace one of the finest built robots on the Indian circuit, it is also the most successful with a 45/2 record. To put that in perspective, winning as many battles as you lose is a sign of a solid bot Winning twice as many battles as you lose is the sign of a very good bot. Winning over 22 times as many battles as you lose is ridiculous! The first 41 of these wins were on the trot, without a single loss in between. That is totally and completely unheard of anywhere else. What's more, the team has helped make great leaps in the sport there, with the arena now far more solid, roofed and able to contain the ferocity of Rust In Peace and others like it.

Honourable Mention: Triggo / Tetanus

On to the honourable mentions and some more brilliant teams and robots. Let's start with Triggo, a black, stealthy-looking robot known better to some by its old alias of Tetanus. This is a rare thing - a solidly-build full body spinner. Often, FBSs are all-or-nothing bots, hitting but taking hits in the process. They tend to be glass cannons. Not Tetanus. It could both deal out hits and take them. The robot's five major competition titles show that.

Triggo as Tetanus, a little battle-scarred but still fully mobile after its final at Motorama 2014
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5S46N3PO7U

But with a new shell, internal upgrades and the new name Triggo, Team Brain Damage's bot is tougher and more deadly than ever, having already racked up two more championship wins this year!

Honourable Mention: Touro Maximus

Also given an honourable mention is Touro Maximus, the pride and joy of Brazil. I'm especially pleased by this because I voted for another of the team's robots, the modern middleweight version named just Touro. The creators of both these bots, Team RioBotz, takes a mathematically cold and logical approach to their builds. Each detail is looked at, tweaked and improved. The design is as compact as possible to reduce surface area and therefore the amount of weight needed for armour. They are also experts in scaling, using their original winning design and reproducing it in other weight classes. As such the Touro family includes a heavyweight, two middleweights ('Classic' and modern), a lightweight, a featherwight, a beetleweight, an American antweight and a fairyweight (British antweight), all slightly different but with similar overall designs (i.e. compact, central wheels and a big spinning death drum up front) .

Here's the big one, Touro Maximus, in the pits.
That bull insignia is adorned on all of the Touro robots and strikes fear in the hearts of many.

The mascot, on the other hand, does not.

Source for both: http://forum.e46fanatics.com/showthread.php?p=13755322

In competition, though, the team is transformed into a group of passionate, excitable team players, as anyone can see (and hear). Whenever one of the many iterations of Touro (or one of the many other robots run by the team) scores a good hit, great cheers go up, along with claps, laughs and celebratory back-pats. If all this weren't enough, Team RioBotz go to great lengths to encourage new people to build their own bots. Not only have they written a book, they also make extremely comprehensive free guides and run the RoboCore events.

Honourable Mention: Weta, God of Ugly Things

Last but not least, Weta, God of Ugly Things earns a mention. Though it's named after a relative of the cricket, this is a beetleweight (only the second to make it into the hall) and another drum spinner. The reason Team Rolling Thunder's Weta has been so influential (other than its impressive, although not mind-blowing, performance) is because its design has been used for kits.

This is Weta. No it isn't, I lied. This is Play N Krazy, a kit.
But then the Kitbots logo probably gave that away.

Here's the actual, original Weta, a very familiar design to a lot of people.

Source for first: http://www.buildersdb.com/botdetails.asp?eventid=395&BotID=8266
Source for second: http://www.teamrollingthunder.com/Kitbots/3lb_Kits/Weta1/body_weta1.html

 If you follow the American beetleweight circuit, you may often hear someone call their bot a Weta. The design has become widespread and these kits have found a good deal of success. If ever there was a competition using a common, standard design, it would probably use Weta kits.

Congratulations to all of the winners! I look forward to 2017, when the best of the best of a new generation of bots will be honoured and immortalised like those here.