Pika

Pika was the name given to two machines entered in Dutch Robot Wars. Pika 2 was the team's first entry, a wedge shaped robot painted in the colours of the Belgian flag with a vertically-mounted spiked disc. It lost its first round battle in the first series, but fought back through a losers melee to reach the heat final, where its run was ended by Botwork. Pika 2 was the only Belgian robot to reach a heat final in Dutch Series 1, giving it the title of the Belgian Champion in that series. Pika 3 competed in the second series with an invertible box shaped design like the original Tornado and Rawbot. This machine defeated Hoot easily, but lost to √3 on a judges decision.

The robot was named after Marco van Hek's youngest son Bram, who frequently went by the nickname "Pika". Unable to think of any name that he liked better, van Hek decided to go with it and model his robot after Pikachu, the iconic face of the popular video game series Pokémon.

The original Pika was never seen on Robot Wars, but competed in other live events in the Netherlands. It was a two-wheel robot powered by wheelchair motors with two spinning discs, one vertical and one horizontal. Pika qualified for the Dutch Wars, but Marco thought that it wasn't competitive enough as it had no srimech or armour, and had open wheels, so he turned it into Pika 2.

After the Dutch Wars, Pika was retired and the team began working on new projects. They built a robot called Caesar (which resembled Derek only armed with an axe), which failed to qualify for Series 7.

Dutch Series 1
In the first round against Hammerhead, the two machines spent the opening encounters circling each other, with neither robot's spinning weapon leaving much of an impression. Hammerhead hit the rear end of Pika 2, and followed this up with three consecutive hits on Pika, which left it immobilised. In victory however, Hammerhead beached itself on Pika 2's wedge, but this didn't save Pika 2 from the Refbot's countdown and the losers melee. Here it met Maximum Torque (Meshuggah was due to compete as well, but had pulled out of the competition). They charged at each other initially, and Pika 2 got underneath Maximum Torque, which knocked the Pikachu toy of Pika 2 backwards. Pika 2's spinning disc barely scratched Maximum Torque's bodywork, while Maximum Torque's hammer tapped Pika 2, doing even less damage. Pika 2 drove its opponent into Shunt, who axed through the hammer slot of Maximum Torque. Maximum Torque appeared to have lost drive on one side, before Pika 2's disc finally caused visible damage to its opponent's side panel. Maximum Torque steadily spun itself towards the pit of oblivion, where a glancing shove from Pika 2 sent it down. In the heat semi-final, Pika faced X-Bot. Pika 2 started slowly once again, and then guided X-Bot onto the flame pit. X-Bot hit the pit release tyre, got underneath Pika 2 and tried to force it down the pit, but failed. In return, Pika 2 carefully tried to push the foe into the pit, but couldn't finish off X-Bot. Pika 2 won the resulting judges' decision thanks to some damage caused late on with the spinning disc against X-Bot's front scoop. The heat final was against Botwork. Pika drove at the side of Botwork early on, pushing it towards the arena side wall. Botwork retaliated by whacking one of Pika 2's wheels, shredding the outer rim and impairing its mobility. Pika 2 went for the pit release, but was hit by Botwork twice more, with the second assault tearing the outer rim completely from the tyres of Pika 2. Botwork pushed Pika 2 onto the flame pit, disintegrating its tyres, and setting fire to the Pikachu toy adorning Pika 2. However, despite all of the punishment it took, Pika 2 was still mobile at the end of the battle, but lost the judges' decision.

As the Belgian robot that reached the furthest stage in the competition, it became the first Belgian Robot Wars Champion.

Dutch Series 2
Pika's first round battle was against the loanerbot Hoot, driven by the Beaverbot team. Pika appeared the more aggressive, slamming Hoot into the pit release tyre, which bent Hoot's rather spindly and weak spinning arms. This attack left Hoot unable to move freely, so Pika 3 pushed it into Sir Killalot, who picked it up and placed it in the centre of the arena. Pika 3 then pushed Hoot onto the edge of the pit, and Hoot drove in. In round two, Pika 3 was against three part clusterbot √3. Pika and √3 started ponderously, before Pika 3 singled out Elevation for an attack, pushing it across the arena into a CPZ. Pika 3 unleashed another onslaught, ramming S.O.Xbot (created by Jeroen van Lieverloo, whose machine X-Bot was beaten by Pika 2 in the first series) into Matilda's CPZ. Matilda attacked with her flywheel, flipping S.O.Xbot out of the arena and hitting a camera. This gave the upper hand to Pika 3, however since only one-third of the machine was immobilised, √3 was allowed to continue fighting. Pika 3 activated the pit, but soon got its lifting spikes stuck under an angle grinder. Its weaponry was noticeably damaged after Refbot freed it. Pika 3 pushed Elevation around, but then spent the remainder of the fight being attacked by Elevation and ODT-0.33, and lost on a judges' decision.

Results

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Wins/Losses

 * Wins: 3
 * Losses: 3

Dutch Series

 * Series 1: Heat Final
 * Series 2: Heat, Round 2

UK Series

 * Series 1-6: Did not enter
 * Series 7: Failed to qualify with Caesar

Outside Robot Wars
After Robot Wars finished, Marco and Tim were joined by Andre Boxebeld from Team Delight, and the team was renamed Team A.D.H.D.. A few months after failing to qualify for Series 7, WJ Dijkstra was looking to sell his robot Gravity 3. Team VHS Robots agreed to buy it, and ended up salvaging parts from it to make a second version their robot Hades. However, despite it being a former power house, it has failed to win any fights. Hades made a return to the live circuit at the Robots: Extreme Wars Live Guildford event in June 2012, but it lost all of its fights. Marco van Hek of Team VHS also bought Tomahawk a few years after Robot Wars finished, and rebuilt it in late 2012, looking different from its Robot Wars appearance.

Trivia

 * As the Belgian Champion was decided by which robot from that country went the furthest in the Dutch series, Pika is the only national champion never to have made it past the heats.
 * Pika is the second competitor to use a Japanese animé character as a mascot. The others were Killerhurtz, with Charmander (also from Pokémon) and Destructosaur, with the Digimon Greymon.
 * It is the only robot named after a Japanese animé character.