Robot Wars: Series 10

Series 10 of Robot Wars is an upcoming series, filmed at the Glasgow arena in May 2017, and will feature only heavyweight robots. It is scheduled to air in October 2017, although no airdates have officially been confirmed yet.

History
The tenth series of Robot Wars was publicly revealed on March 6th 2017, the day after Episode 1 of Series 9 first aired. Applications for competing heavyweights opened on this day, initially with a deadline of 20th April 2017. This deadline was brought forwards to 20th March 2017, and then pushed back again to 27th March following a series of rule changes.

The series was originally planned to include a Featherweight Championship, but on 21st March 2017, this was postponed due to time constraints, with the intention of filming a featherweight contest after the main series had concluded filming.

The RAF revealed over Twitter that Robot Wars intends to air a "Services Special" in late 2017-early 2018, although it is unconfirmed if this is linked to Series 10.

On 12th April, tickets were made available for audience members. The filming took place across six days, suggesting another six-part series. This also confirmed the return of Dara Ó Briain and Angela Scanlon.

On 6th June, online retailer Amazon opened pre-orders for the book Robot Wars: Build Your Own Robot as well as T-shirts, and stated in the product description that Series 10 would air in October 2017 to coincide with the book's release on October 2nd. This airing window was further suggested by Dara Ó Briain in an article by The Guardian.

On 18th September, a tweet from Dara Ó Briain suggested that the series will air on October 22nd, although this date had yet to be confirmed by the BBC at the time. On October 1st, the UK Robot Wars Facebook page released a trailer for Series 10 featuring Carbide; originally, the post also confirmed 22nd October as the air date for the new series. However, the Facebook post was later revised to remove this information.

Format
The format for Series 10 was officially revealed by Robot Wars: The Official Handbook, and each qualifying episode contains five rounds.


 * Round 1: Group Battles - Two three-way battles are held in each heat, with only one outright winner, which will be decided by the Judges if necessary. The winner qualifies directly to Round 3, while the losers enter Round 2.
 * Round 2: Redemption Knockouts - The losers of the Group Battles face each other in head-to-head battles, and only the winner will remain in the competition. It is determined which robot will fight which through their performance in the Group Battle, as whichever robot finished second in one Group Battle will face the robot which placed third in the other Group Battle of the heat.
 * Round 3: Semi-Finals - Head-to-head battles between one winner of a Group Battle, and one winner of a Redemption Knockout. The winner qualifies for Round 5 (Heat Final), and the loser qualifies for Round 4 (3rd Place Wildcard)
 * Round 4: 3rd Place Wildcard - A head-to-head battle between the two robots which lost in Round 3. The winner claims third place within the heat, and qualifies for Round 6 (Wildcard Battle).
 * Round 5: Heat Final - The Heat Final between the two robots to remain undefeated in the episode. The winner of the Heat Final becomes the heat winner, and qualifies for the Grand Final directly, at the Round 7 stage. The loser is automatically placed in Round 6 (Wildcard Battle) alongside the third place finisher of the heat.

The format for the Grand Final is unknown, but it begins with a ten-way Group Battle.
 * Round 6: Wildcard Battle - All five robots to lose in the Heat Final, and all five robots to win in the 3rd Place Wildcard battle are placed into one ten-way battle with no time limit. The last robot standing will become the sixth competitor in the Grand Final.

Rule Changes
In response to the dominance of spinners, entanglement weapons have been legalised, as long as the robot's weapon is specifically built to tackle spinning weaponry - it cannot consist of low-tech devices such as a fishing net, cables or mesh. Legal entanglement devices cannot exceed 1m in length, nor can it attach the opponent to the competing robot.

The new walkerbot weight limit was increased to 145kg, to encourage the creation of more robots of this ilk, while the equivalent weight limit for heavyweight shufflebots was also increased slightly to 125kg.

The standard weight limit for the proposed featherweight category was increased to 13.6kg - 1.6kg more than the previous limit. Shuffling featherweights could weigh 15.1kg, an increase from the standard 13.6kg limit, while walking featherweights could weigh 17.6kg.

Additional clauses were added for safety reasons, in that LED lights must be disabled upon the removal of the safety link, and that locking bars for flippers and spinners need to be possible to insert while the robot is in any position. The regulations for pneumatic weapons were also changed. The main isolation valve must now be attached to the bottle, and be easily accessible while the robot is inverted. Dump valves must be accessible by hand, and be located in one single location.

The producers of the show have stated that they would like to see robots apply with little-used weapons such as crushers and pneumatic spikes, or 'control-bots' in the vein of BattleBots competitor Complete Control.

Trivia

 * With Dara Ó Briain and Angela Scanlon retaining their roles yet again, Series 10 marks the first time in the show's run that the main presenting duo has remained the same for three consecutive series (not including each series of Robot Wars Extreme).