M2

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

- M2 website

M2 was a half barrel-shaped robot with a wedge at the front, which competed in Series 7 of Robot Wars. The robot was fast and agile and was armed with a large and powerful flipper, capable of one flip every two seconds. M2 made a very explosive start to its Robot Wars run, flipping two robots out of the arena within the first minute of its very first battle. M2 was named after the motorway in England that the team travelled along to reach the studio, which is why there was no "M1". The team did not choose to enter Series 6, which they later viewed as a mistake, but they did attempt to enter 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 interschool 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.

Series 7
M2 made a strong start to its heat, by flipping the other robots around with its powerful flipper. It singled out Shell Shock, flipping it over, then out of the arena, making M2 the first robot to do this in Series 7. M2 quickly followed up this sucess 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. Here, M2's thick shell protected it from any more than superficial damage from Pussycat's blade. It attempted to flip Pussycat out of the arena, but failed to succeed. It managed to get Pussycat stuck on its side towards the end and won the resulting judges decision.

"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 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

However, it broke away. It 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.

In the semi-finals, M2 met Atomic, who was larger and had a more powerful flipper. 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 wall and flipped out by Atomic.

Results

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Wins/Losses

 * Wins: 3
 * Losses: 1

Series Record

 * Series 1-6: Did not enter
 * Series 7: Semi-Finals, Round 1