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For the fictitious robot in Robot Wars: Arenas of Destruction, see Loki

Loki is a heavyweight robot designed by Team Kernow, which attempted to enter Series 9-10 of Robot Wars. However, it was not selected to compete in either series, and would later evolve into the team's current heavyweight Bolster.

Design[]

Loki flips

Loki with its flipper raised

In contrast to other UK and European robots of its kind, Loki was to feature an angular box-wedge shape similar to those of earlier incarnations of Plunderbird. The front wheels would have been exposed as part of the design, which would use a four-wheel drive setup with chain drives and two centrally-mounted electric motors.[1]

Loki's main weapon was to be a pneumatic four-bar flipper, which was decorated with two 'horns' and would have fired in a similar motion to the flipper on modern BattleBots competitor Lucky. Vital components for this, including the main CO2 tank, would be located at the back of the main chassis, explaining the tall protrusion at the rear. A large angled wedge would have provided Loki with defence against spinners, while also allowing it to get underneath opponents in tandem with sets of optional wedgelets. Team Kernow's CAD renderings depicted the heavyweight in a grey, bright green and yellow colour scheme similar to its featherweight counterpart, though this was later changed to a predominantly black and yellow scheme by the time it reached a near-complete state.

Series Record[]

Series Loki Series Record
Series 1-7 Did not enter
Series 8 Did not enter
Series 9 Not selected
Series 10 Not selected

Outside Robot Wars[]

In addition to the heavyweight Loki, Team Kernow have created featherweight versions of the robot, which feature similar designs and four-bar weapons to their larger counterpart, and have competed in various events organised by Robo Challenge and Roaming Robots. The original Loki was a two-wheel drive robot armed with an electric four-bar lifter - a weaponless version first competed at the 2013 Robot Wars Portsmouth event, appearing in six battles.[2] Loki was subsequently redesigned to incorporate four-wheel drive and a wedged box-shaped design; it competed in this form at the 2014 Featherweight Championships (with two drive motors removed due to weight restrictions) and the 2014 Robo Challenge Yeovil event.[3][4]

Loki 2

Loki 2

Loki chassis

The chassis for Loki 3, later renamed Bolster, under construction (September 2018)

The next version, Loki 2, reverted to a two-wheel drive configuration, and was the first to be armed with a four-bar pneumatic flipper. It made its debut at the 2015 Featherweight World Championships, finishing 47th in the competition.[5] In 2016, Loki 2 reached the top 12 in the FRA Featherweight International Championships, before losing to Amnesia in a head-to-head and again to Omega and Night Fury.[6] Most recently, it attended the Extreme Robots Portsmouth event in May 2017, fighting in several featherweight battles.

The heavyweight version intended for Robot Wars was initially named Loki 3 by the team, entering construction in February 2017.[7] This eventually reached a near-complete state in 2019 under the new name Bolster, making its public debut at the annual GeekFest event in Cornwall alongside Loki 2. Bolster would attend in a revised black paint scheme with yellow and green inserts, with the three front wedgelets also being repainted from green to yellow by this time.[8][9]

As of September 2022, Team Kernow continue to attend events in the UK with Loki 2 and the partially-finished Bolster, with both being present at RoboNerd that month as static displays. The team publicly revealed on Facebook during this time their intention to return to combat in the 2023 live season.[10]

References[]

External Links[]

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