Flippers are a type of weapon designed to get underneath opponents and throw them into the air. Although flippers are typically non-damaging by design, opposition robots that have been flipped sometimes suffer damage as they make contact with the BattleBox floor again.
Many flippers have been designed to overturn opposition robots, and in more recent years, have been powerful enough to throw 250lb robots metres into the air and into dedicated out of the arena (OOTA) zones for an alternative way to win by knockout.
Types of Flippers[]
Toro flipping the 340lb World Peace.
As BattleBots has evolved, there have been a number of variations on the traditional flipper design. However, they can typically be categorized into one of two groups:
Rear-hinged flippers have their hinge at the back of the robot, meaning the flipping arm is able to flip upwards and launch robots high into the air.
Main article: Rear-Hinged Flippers
P1 using its front-hinged flipper against Jäger.
Front-hinged flippers have their hinge at the front of the robot, and are more optimized to throw an opponent forward and in front of it, as opposed to high into the air.
Main article: Front-Hinged Flippers
A demonstration of Warthog's full-body flipper.
Additional flipper mechanisms are listed below. These may fall into one of the above.
LockJaw retracting its spring flipper.
Spring flippers use the spring force generated by compressing a spring to launch opponents. Typically these flippers act more like rear-hinged flippers, however typically have their rotation be around a midpoint rather than an endpoint. Examples include early iterations of Lock-Jaw and Tantrum, as well as the Team Whyachi middleweight Red Square.
BattleBots Proving Ground competitor Warthog would introduce a new full-body flipper design. Its design would spin an internal flywheel, before braking it, causing the entire robot to flip over and roll.
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