The Swarm

"The power of four!"

- Robot Wars: The Official Handbook

The Swarm was a Clusterbot which competed in Series 10 of Robot Wars, built by Team Big Brother. The overall unit includes Duck, Pinza, Skye, and Blenda.

Design
The Swarm was a four-part clusterbot, with each part weighing roughly 26kg. Each is driven by a different member of Team Big Brother in battle.

Duck was a yellow wedge-shaped robot with a rear-hinged flipper, capable of flipping a motorbike. This flipper also allowed the robot to self-right. Alternatively, The Duck could drive under other robots to hold them in place. Duck was painted entirely yellow.

Blenda is invertible, and was The Swarm’s primary way of inflicting damage, as its horizontal bar spinner can damage even heavyweight robots. Blenda has a high ground clearance around all sides, and is also yellow.

Pinza used a roughly roll-over shape, and is similar in design to Monad. Its ground clearance was high, but Pinza was very fast, and was armed with horizontal pincers, to match the robot’s insect theme. This design was previously used by Team Big Brother as part of their BattleBots entry Creepy Crawlies, which also meant that Pinza is one of the lightest in The Swarm, as Creepy Crawlies is a five-part clusterbot. Pinza uses a camouflage green appearance, and was lined with a row of LEDs.

Skye was blue, and features a huge overhead windmill structure, with six protruding pieces of tyre. Skye can use sit-and-spin tactics to protect itself from all angles, although its primary purpose is to entangle spinning weapons. Skye has no defence against being flipped.

Series 10
The Swarm competed in Episode 1

Results

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Outside Robot Wars
The Swarm was not the first clusterbot that Ian and Sam Watts entered into a televised competition, as they had previously competed in ABC’s second season of BattleBots with the five-part clusterbot, Creepy Crawlies. All five parts of Creepy Crawlies were identical to ROBOT, and the team also contained Team Terror Turtle. Creepy Crawlies had to enter BattleBots: The Gears Awaken in order to earn a place in the main bracket, but it was drawn against a former champion in Son of Whyachi, as well as Ultraviolent. Although Creepy Crawlies remained mobile for longer than Ultraviolent, Son of Whyachi’s spinner immobilised all sections of Creepy Crawlies, eliminating it from the competition.

Trivia

 * With four parts in the arena, The Swarm is the clusterbot with the most components in Robot Wars, joint with Nuts 2 and its three minibots.