Team Tie-Rip is a Dutch team that competed in both series of Dutch Robot Wars. Its captain, Jeroen van Lieverloo, also competed in several UK series of Robot Wars across various other teams until the united Team Tie-Rip represented The Netherlands in Robot Wars: World Series.
The Team[]
- "I first saw Robot Wars in 1998, so it must have been the first series. I only saw 20 minutes of it in total as we could not get the BBC in our home. I happened to zap past it on the TV in our holiday park and it immediately caught my attention. It was amazing! It was magical! I had no idea anything like this existed. I can’t remember which fights I saw but they where, of course, the best fights ever. I got so hyped from those 20 minutes that I instantly knew I wanted to build a combat robot. But how? I did not know how to weld and I had barley touched a drill or an angle grinder in my life. I knew electronics but not how to build anything like a speed controller. Remember, this was in 1998. I did not have internet access at home and, even when I got it a year later, there was so little info available online. I was a DJ at the weekends and most of my time went into music and parties (not that I’m complaining! It was a lot of fun). And then it happened. There was an advert running on TV. They were looking for Dutch roboteers! I honestly felt like that advert had been made for me, and me alone. I was going to enter and build the best robot out there! They had a website and a forum set up and even started to show the UK version on TV every Friday afternoon. Annoyingly, this was exactly the time I was not able to watch due to school and a part-time job, and the VCR we had was so old it failed to record most of the time…more on that later. But there was the forum! I met all sorts of strange people there and lots of them knew way more about robots than I did. Back then I always claimed I knew everything. I think most of the other builders could see that I actually knew very little, but I felt like an expert in a secret club. After using the forum to grow my knowledge and resources, I started my robot. The search for parts began; wheelchair motors, batteries, relays, RC stuff etc. etc. A friend from school joined my team: Jaap van Donzel. I don’t really remember how I recruited him, or how we came up with the name Team Tie-Rip, but it happened. Soon after that our logo was born and I haven’t changed it since. Maybe it is time for an update? Next up, making something that could move. Remember that old, broken VCR? Up until the day I went to film the first Dutch Robot Wars I had still not seen any robots fights other than the ones I caught at the holiday park because of that stupid machine. Streaming online video was not a thing back then. Even online photographs only came in 640*480 resolution. Also, meeting strangers from the Internet was a dangerous step to take back then! I’m glad I did though, some of them are still my friends to this day. And we learnt enough of the basics to get the robot together. Xbot was born!"
- — Jeroen van Lieverloo on his origins to Robot Wars
Jeroen van Lieverloo is the president of Dutch Robot Games, the primary organiser of live events in The Netherlands. Prior to Dutch Series 1 being filmed, he was a complete novice to engineering and robotics, but self-taught himself in order to compete on the show, before gradually picking up skills and experience.
Team Tie-Rip in Dutch Series 1, with Jeroen van Lieverloo wearing a Santa hat
The team entered the first series with X-Bot, and the second series with Impact. Team captain Jeroen van Lieverloo also built S.O.X-Bot (Son of X-Bot), which made up one third of the clusterbot √3². All three robots made it past the first round of their respective heats, but only √3² made the Heat Final, before losing to eventual champion PulverizeR. The team also intended to enter UK Series 7 with an updated version of Impact, named Impact 2, but failed to qualify due to electrical problems, so Jeroen van Lieverloo joined WJ Dijkstra on the Gravity team for that series.
The team are the current owners of Gravity 5.5, and compete with it on the live circuit, including the first live event of the new Robot Wars at Portsmouth in March 2013. They applied to enter Series 8 of Robot Wars with this version of Gravity, inviting WJ Dijkstra to return as driver, but were not selected for that series. Jeroen van Lieverloo would instead compete as part of Team KODOX, who entered Tough as Nails and were eliminated in the first round.
Jeroen van Lieverloo later joined Team Rubbish to compete in Series 9 with Cobra, electing not to apply with Gravity as he wished to dedicate more time to the development of its newest iteration, Gravity 6.[1]
Team Tie-Rip with Tough as Nails in the World Series
For Series 10, Jeroen van Lieverloo built his own robot alongside his girlfriend Kirsty van den Brink, Niels van der Berg, and Jeroen van der Loo. Their creation, THE BASH, competed in Robot Wars: World Series, representing the Netherlands as part of the 'Rest of the World' team. After THE BASH was forced to withdraw due to irreparable damage, Jeroen van der Loo's robot Tough as Nails replaced it, and competed under the captaincy of Team Tie-Rip.
Robots[]
| Name | Weight Class | Series |
|---|---|---|
| X-Bot | Heavyweight | Dutch Series 1 |
| Impact | Heavyweight | Dutch Series 2 |
| √3² | Heavyweight | Dutch Series 2 |
| THE BASH | Heavyweight | Series 10 |
| Tough as Nails | Heavyweight | Series 10 |
Wins/Losses[]
- Wins: 4
- Losses: 5
NOTE: This incorporates the wins and losses of every battle in Dutch Robot Wars fought by Jeroen van Lieverloo, and only the UK series battles where Jeroen van Lieverloo was the team captain, thus excluding Gravity in Series 7, Tough as Nails in Series 8, Cobra in Series 9, while including Tough as Nails in Series 10.
Series Record[]
Dutch Series[]
| Dutch Series | Team Tie-Rip Series Record |
|---|---|
| Series 1 | Heat, Round 2 with X-Bot |
| Series 2 | Heat, Round 2 with Impact Heat Final with √3² |
UK Series[]
| Series | Team Tie-Rip Series Record |
|---|---|
| The First Wars | Did not enter |
| The Second Wars | Did not enter |
| The Third Wars | Did not enter |
| The Fourth Wars | Did not enter |
| The Fifth Wars | Did not enter |
| The Sixth Wars | Did not enter |
| The Seventh Wars | Failed to qualify with Impact 2 |
| Series 8 | Not selected with Gravity 5.7 Heat, Round 1 with Tough as Nails (Jeroen van Lieverloo) |
| Series 9 | Heat, Round 1 with Cobra (Jeroen van Lieverloo) |
| Series 10 | World Series with THE BASH and Tough as Nails |
Outside Robot Wars[]
Jeroen van Lieverloo is the chairman of the Dutch Robot Games, which organises all robotic live events held in The Netherlands. Lieverloo also regularly competed at live events outside of Robot Wars, particularly using newer versions of Gravity, as well as many robots he had entered into Robot Wars.
Jeroen van der Loo (far left) with Reality
Reality at BattleBots in 2018
As one of the most active roboteers in The Netherlands, Jeroen van Lieverloo is often invited to compete as part of other Dutch teams at various events. In 2018 alone, Jeroen van Lieverloo competed at the Chinese competition Fighting My Bots as a member of the Equinox team, and he also entered the 2018 season of BattleBots with Reality, as part of a collaborative Dutch team. For more information on these campaigns, see Team KODOX. For the 2019 season of BattleBots, Jeroen van Lieverloo instead joined Team PCP to compete with Petunia.
WeeWoo in 2019
This Is Not A Drill in 2020
Greg Cathalina formed his own team in 2018, competing in the online web-series Bugglebots with the clusterbot WeeWoo. He entered as the captain of Team Health & Safety, joined in 2018 by Cosmin Gorgovan. WeeWoo reached the second round before being eliminated by Maximum Ogredrive. WooWoo returned in the 2019 series, with Greg Cathalina now joined by Dave Weston. Although WeeWoo was eliminated in the first round, it did finish second in the ten-way Dung Beetle melee. Starting in 2016 up to 2020, Greg Cathalina also built four separate versions of the beetleweight flipper This Is Not A Drill.
OMG! at BuggleBots
Niels van der Berg (right) with Nelly the Ellybot
In 2018, Neils van der Berg competed in Bugglebots with OMG!, a two-wheel drive beetleweight with a titanium construction and an overhead grabbing arm. OMG! enjoyed limited success, losing its first-round battle to Bourbon after getting flipped over and left unable to self-right. In the subsequent Redemption melee, OMG! initially outlasted Hard Knox and withstood several blows from the undercutting spinner of Mini Spinny. However, OMG! was eventually eliminated after getting stuck on the centre of the arena floor and counted out. Niels van der Berg also competed in the 2019 season of BattleBots with Nelly the Ellybot.
Total Loss
Hold My Beer
Jeroen van Lieverloo has also completed featherweight and beetleweight versions of Tough as Nails in 2019. The featherweight version, named Total Loss, was originally started by Alexander Russchen, and debuted at INDI Robot Games 2019. The beetleweight version, Hold My Beer, competed in the second series of BuggleBots, losing both of its competition matches. It performed respectably in the ten-way Dung Beetle melee and a UK vs The World match against Maximum Ogredrive, but still lost on both occasions.
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