Robot Wars Battle Arena heading to Sydney

SYDNEY will see the rise of the machines when an international team of robots come to do battle.

SYDNEY will see the rise of the machines when an international team of robots come to do battle.

But luckily for us humans they will be fighting each other when the Robot Wars Battle Arena visits Australia for the first time at the Sydney EB Games Expo 2014.

Robot Wars ... the Ripper.

2011 Robot Wars UK champ John Findlay will be bringing his machine Ripper and said to not be fooled by their small size, these are 100kg of expertly-engineered fighting metal.

“My weapon is a flipper powered by CO2 which is capable of flipping a car over, that’s how powerful these machines we’re bringing are. A small Mini it is quite capable of flipping over,” he said.

Robot Wars ... Thor.

Robot Wars, based on the early 2000s TV show, stage monthly battles around the UK where the aim is to immobilise your opponent.

Ripper will be going into battle against Meggamouse and Thor, each with their specially designed strengths.

“Thor has a nasty CO2 powered axe which pummels everything to death. You wouldn’t want to be meeting that in a dark alleyway,” Mr Findlay said.

“Meggamouse has another flipper which is not as powerful but it’s got exposed wheels so it can’t get stuck.”

Ripper

Robot overlords are a varied bunch with families and clubs of enthusiasts after a bit of social fun taking part, right through to the serious competitors of engineering geeks who want to crush their opponents.

Mr Findlay, a design engineer by trade, is unashamedly one of the latter: “there’s serious competitors like me who just want to be the best so I’m not afraid to take it apart and improve upon it,” he said.

Meggamouse.

“Everyone has their own little context of what is best. I like the challenge of building the machine and getting something new and getting rid of design flaws.”

He hopes the exhibition will inspire some local engineers and anyone else interested to give it a go.

“We’re really looking forward to coming to Australia and we hope people are looking forward to seeing them in the flesh, we hope we can inspire some future engineers to build some robots,” Mr Findlay said.

“And we’re looking forward to showing to what we can do. It’s quite exciting to see what the response will be.”

THE SYDNEY EB GAMES EXPO WILL BE HELD AT THE SYDNEY SHOWGROUND, SYDNEY OLYMPIC PARK ON OCT. 3-5.

Thor.