M2

"M2 is our own design and build...made at home in the garage using basic skills"

- M2's Website

M2 was a highly engineered, half barrel-shaped robot with a wedge at the front, which competed in Series 7 of Robot Wars. The robot was fast and agile with top speeds of 20mph and was armed with a large and powerful flipper, capable of one flip every two seconds and self-righting quickly. Despite Paul Cooper's concerns about spinning discs, M2 made a very explosive start to its televised Robot Wars run, flipping two robots out of the arena within the first minute of its very first battle, it reached the Series Semi-Finals the same series before losing to the experienced Atomic. M2 failed to qualify for Series 5, despite beating Roobarb in a qualifier battle, but the team did not choose to enter Series 6, which they later viewed as a mistake. They did attempt to enter the New Blood tournament in Extreme 2, but received no reply from Mentorn.

The M2 seen in the Seventh Wars was in fact the second version of the machine. The first had been used in inter-school events and some other Robot Games from Holland. It was stripped down to create the M2 seen in the Seventh Wars, with the old chassis salvaged to make a garden feature.

M2 most likely stands for Mincer 2, based on the fact that the team tried to enter a robot named Mincer into Series 4 but they failed to qualify. Also, the team's website mentions M2 as the "successor to Mincer". After its semi-final defeat to Atomic, Craig Charles mentioned that it was named after a motorway, although this claim looks to be incorrect.

Series 7
M2 competed in Heat A of the Seventh Wars, and made a strong start to its heat against Tiberius 3, Shell Shock and Vader in the first round. Despite being the only newcomer in this battle, M2 still dominated the battle, by flipping the other robots around with its powerful flipper. It singled out Shell Shock, flipping it over onto its side. Before Shell Shock could then self-right using its side self-righting arms, M2 threw it into the arena side wall, and then out of the arena, making M2 the first robot to do this in Series 7. M2 quickly followed up this success by dispatching the immobilised Vader in the same way, but not before Vader had smashed part of M2's flipper, which took urgent repairs in the pit. This put M2 through to the next round along with Tiberius 3, after the repairs were made in the pits, M2 was then put up against the number 9 seeds Pussycat. In this battle, M2's thick shell protected it from any more than superficial damage from Pussycat's blade, Pussycat could only scratch the shell of M2. It attempted to flip Pussycat out of the arena several times, but failed to succeed. It managed to get Pussycat stuck on its side towards the end, with Pussycat only recovering as cease was called, the battle resulted in a judges' decision, but the judges gave the victory to M2, sending the newcomers through to the heat final, where they were up against Tiberius 3 for the second time in the heat. "The fight with Pussycat was very close, if I remember correctly the judges took some 15 minutes to decide. M2 was covered in gashes from PC which were inspected by one of the judges, but none penetrated the armour so I guess they took them to be superficial. During the last 10 seconds of the fight, just as it looked as though Pussycat was struggling to get back on its wheels, a wiring loom tie snapped in M2. This allowed the wiring to one of the motors to be drawn into the gears shorting out the speed controller thus losing drive to one side. The Robot survived this...fortunately for M2 the fight was just ending so it went almost unnoticed."

- Paul Cooper

In the heat final, M2 was seized by Tiberius 3, being crushed by the powerful beak. "Tiberius wouldn’t let go and every time we were dragged towards the pit, we had sufficient traction on one side to take us back to the CPZ."

- Paul Cooper

It broke away, but it soon became apparent to the team that M2 had a punctured tyre, and was driving to the right on every move. The drivers managed to recover by using gentle movements and controlled M2 into a powerful flip, which caused Tiberius 3 to land in the pit. This put M2 through to the Series Semi-Finals

In the semi-finals, M2 was drawn up against the more experienced Atomic machine in the first round, as Atomic was larger and had a more powerful flipper, as well as having more experience, M2 went into this battle as the underdogs. Despite the size disadvantage, M2 put up a good fight, almost flipping Atomic out of the arena. However, towards the end of the fight, both were wearing down and M2 was ultimately pinned against the arena side wall and was then flipped out of the arena by Atomic, eliminating M2 from the competition.

Results

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Wins/Losses

 * Wins: 3
 * Losses: 1



Series Record

 * Series 1-3: Did not enter
 * Series 4: Failed to qualify with Mincer
 * Series 5: Failed to qualify
 * Series 6: Did not enter
 * Series 7: Semi-Finals, Round 1

Trivia

 * M2 was the third robot to throw two robots out of the arena in a single battle, but the first to do so in the main competition.
 * M2 was one of the very few robots to have a female team captain.
 * M2 has since been upgraded into M2XT, it remains the same shape and colour, but is tougher and has an improved flipper. The team have also built a featherweight version of M2 called TKM2.
 * M2 also competed as Mousecatcher in Technogames in the Assault Course, but lost in the first round to Mighty Mouse. M2 had two spikes attached to its front to act as ball controllers for the event. The team also had a robot known as Mechanoid.
 * The chassis from M2 that failed to qualify for Series 5 was heading for the scrapheap, but it was salvaged and now features as a garden plant trainer.