Reaper

Reaper was a robot which competed in the pilot episode of Robot Wars filmed in March 2016, ahead of the main recording of Series 8. Entered by Nottingham-based Calum Jones, Reaper is a near-exact replica of Series 7 heat winner The Grim Reaper, a robot which the team also own, and was built to make the design of The Grim Reaper competitive in the modern day.

Design
Reaper is designed to replicate the past Robot Wars semi-finalist, The Grim Reaper, and as a result, it is an octagonal robot driven by two partially exposed wheels armed with a pneumatic flipper, which covered the entire length of the robot and also served as the robot's self-righting mechanism. Unlike The Grim Reaper, the armour of Reaper is comprised of HARDOX, and the robot also used more up-to-date internals. The other key differences from The Grim Reaper include the robot's black colour-scheme with skull motifs, and its slightly greater width.

Qualification
Calum Jones applied for Reaper to enter the main competition of Series 8, and although it was not selected to compete on television, Reaper was nevertheless invited to participate in the pilot episode. An application was also submitted for Reaper to compete in Series 9, but the robot was not selected to be involved with the series in any capacity, so Calum Jones instead accepted an invitation from Jamie McHarg to join the Coyote team, which Jones would also return to in Series 10.

Series 8
In the first round of the pilot, Reaper was drawn against Merlin, Wraith, and Monte, although Wraith withdraw shortly prior to the battle after catching fire backstage. The fight started out well for Reaper, and after a minute or so, Monte lost drive on one side, leaving it to be pitted by Reaper, securing its victory. Reaper and Merlin fought a one-on-one tussle until cease was called at the end of the 3 minutes. From this, Reaper and Merlin went through to the next round.

Advancing to the head-to-head stage, Reaper next fought Turbulence. However, it suffered from technical problems, as the valve that fires the flipper started seizing up. Turbulence flipped Reaper over, and it successfully self-righted once, but once Turbulence managed to overturn Reaper again, it was unable to self-right for a second time, leaving Turbulence as the winner of the battle. Although the usual format of Series 8 should have led Reaper to battle Merlin and Ka-Pow! in head-to-head battles, it was instead eliminated at this stage due to time constraints.

Results

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Series Record
NOTE: The Grim Reaper, the robot which Reaper replicated, was a competitor in Series 7, also competing in Series 3 with a different design.

Outside Robot Wars
Team member Calum Jones also has a wide history in robotic combat. Aside from competing at live events with Reaper and owning the Series 7 version of The Grim Reaper, Calum Jones also competes with featherweight robots. After Dave Moulds built the invertible robot 540, Calum Jones renamed it to Disturbance and fought at events with it. At the UK Featherweight Championship in 2017, Calum Jones built a featherweight tribute to the BattleBots champion Bite Force, replicating its design under the name Drivetrain. In one notable moment, Drivetrain drove Equinox into the arena wall, blasting the wall segment into the air, and Drivetrain drove its opponent and itself out of the arena.

Trivia

 * Every heat in Series 8 contained one returning team which won a heat in Series 7, and if Reaper is considered a direct follow-up to The Grim Reaper, then Reaper started this trend in the pilot episode.