Dystopia

Dystopia is a heavyweight robot that attempted to enter the 2016 series of Robot Wars. It was not chosen to compete in the new series, although it was active at live events around the time Team Ablaze sent their application for qualification.

Dystopia was originally built by John Findlay as a new version of Ripper, which won the 2011 UK Championship as well as several other smaller championships including the Winter Tour. The robot gained its current name and appearance when it was sold to Gareth Anstee of Team Ablaze in 2013.

Aside from team captain Gareth Anstee, Team Ablaze also includes Laurie Calvert, builder of Lightning, Mike Onslow of the International Wreck Crew, and Chris Smith.

Design
Dystopia is a wedge-shaped robot armed with a full-pressure pneumatic flipper. The flipper features a distinctively wide front plate to increase its surface area, with three smaller sections intended to help Dystopia get underneath opponents easier. This allows Dystopia to flip other robots over and out of the arena during live events.

The robot is painted black, red, blue and white, and is themed around a futuristic police vehicle, with red and blue LEDs and black police badge motifs painted on its flipper and back panel.

Robot Wars Live Events
After competing in live events as Ripper with considerable success, the robot was sold by John Findlay to Team Ablaze in 2013, who proceeded to repaint it and rename it Dystopia. Dystopia first fought in the 2013 Winter Tour, but suffered from reliability problems that prevented it from achieving any particular success. Eventually, its age started to show, and Dystopia was extensively rebuilt in 2014 with new electronics, upgraded pneumatics and a revised paint scheme.

At its first returning event in 2015, held at Barnsley, Dystopia went on to win the championship, despite being low on power. Dystopia was thus seeded 8th for the 2015 World Championship, despite only competing in one event so far that year. At the World Championship, Dystopia reached the final 16 before being jointly flipped out by Manta and Iron-Awe. Gareth Anstee also competes in featherweight battles with a scaled-down version of Dystopia, known as Utopia, an extensively rebuilt version of Rip Evo.

Outside Robot Wars
Dystopia regularly competes at live events with considerable success, effortlessly capable of throwing other robots out of the arena at some point throughout its appearances.

After receiving an internal upgrade for 2015, Dystopia was entirely rebuilt for 2016, and competed in the 2016 FRA UK Heavyweight Championship as part of the Robots Live! Stevenage event. It reached the quarter-finals after flipping Photon Storm out of the arena, but was flipped out itself by Manta and lost its losers melee after becoming immobilised by Nuts and eventual champion Gabriel. However, it still won the Robots Live! Challenge Nut at the same event.

Series Record

 * Series 1-7: Did not enter
 * 2016 Series: Failed to qualify

Trivia

 * The police badge motifs painted on Dystopia's flipper and back panel are silhouettes resembling the central part of the Robot Wars logo.