Vertical crushers

Vertical crushers are one of the most prominent forms of Gripping weapons. They were designed to crumple the top armour of opponents with a curved arm. To maximize attacking potential, these were almost always hydraulically powered, often allowing the crushing arm to deliver several tonnes of pressure. The pioneer of this type of weapon was double world champion Razer, and Tiberius 3 won the University Challenge with similar weaponry.

The strengths of these machines are that they are effective at trapping opponents, and are even capable of lifting robots off the ground (without the need for dedicated lifting weapons), which Razer and Tiberius have managed on several occasions.

The weaknesses of vertical crushing weapons were that they often had slow, inefficient, or non-existant self-righting mechanisms. This is coupled with the fact that it is difficult to implement a vertical crushing arm on an invertible machine without leaving a high ground clearance after being flipped.

However, some of the more ignorant of the Robot Wars community insist that all vertical crushers are merely "clones" of the famous Razer. Many called the other vertical crushers "A poor-man's Razer". This belief has been fueled by Jonathan Pearce's unhelpful calls of a claw being "Razer-esque". However, most of the Robot Wars community have more respect for the effort put into vertical crushers.

List of Robots with Vertical Crushers
Robots are listed alphabetically. Robots that are not heavyweight are listed with a green background.