Forks are the name given to a type of active or passive weapon on BattleBots competitors consisting of a long, often triangular wedge of material. Unlike wedgelets, forks tend to be thinner than they are tall.
Rather than being used to puncture armor and damage opponents, forks are typically used to slide in underneath opponents with the view to tip them over, or feed them into another weapon. These can be powered in the case of lifting forks, static, or mounted onto hinged mechanisms to scrape across the surface of the BattleBox floor and be as low as possible.
History and Design[]
Vlad the Impaler with its forks raised.
Forks have existed in some capacity since the earliest BattleBots events, with Gage Cauchois' heavyweight Vlad the Impaler, which used a unique aircraft cable and pulley mechanism to 'pull' its forks up from a passive, ground-scraping position. This allowed Vlad the Impaler to get underneath many of its opponents and overturn them with relative ease. Vlad the Impaler also made use of magnets housed within the underside of its forks to pull them even closer to the steel floor.
While Vlad the Impaler continued to find success with its configuration, other competitors began to adopt similar articulating fork weaponry. Notably, Chuck Pitzer's Alpha Raptor, later known as Beta Raptor and Gamma Raptor, sported forks either side of its lifting arm to help guide opponents into the path of its main weapon. Robot Wars Series 2 champion Panic Attack sported a similar weapon to Vlad the Impaler, but was actually inspired by the four-bar lifting mechanism of BioHazard, according to builder Kim Davies. Both robots opted to utilize side 'skirts' made from thin sheet metal to scrape the ground and prevent attacks from the back and sides using a similar principle to forks.
In recent seasons, the evolution of vertical spinners has encouraged the 'ground game' to dominate what is considered to be the BattleBots meta. For maximized efficiency, hinged forks are produced to be long and sharp at the front. Some forks, such as those seen on Tantrum, are designed with barbs on the tip which purposely snag opponents once caught, making them increasingly difficult to escape from.
One of Deep Six's static forks becomes stuck in the killsaw slot, resulting in its immobilization.
End Game immediately drives into a killsaw slot against RIPperoni.
Despite their advantages, a common enemy of forks has been an inadvertent hazard in the form of killsaw slots. When the saws are inactive, the gap they protrude from leaves space for thin forks to fall down and abruptly stop a robot. This has caused several competitors, such as End Game, HyperShock and Deep Six to bury themselves deep into the slots and even raise their drive wheels off the BattleBox floor as a result. In the case of the latter, this caused a knockout loss to SMEEEEEEEEEEEEE during World Championship VI, though others been able to escape or required intervention from their opponents for the fight to continue.
Outside BattleBots[]
Forks have also become a common feature of robots in smaller weight classes, with various competitors ranging from 150g fairyweights up to 120lb middleweights featuring such weaponry. Often serving as means of controlling an opponent, forks are made from a variety of materials in lighter robots, such as mild steel, AR500, or even UMHW plastic.
As is the case with heavyweight competitors, many smaller robots are able to have their forks removed in favor of a more defensive configuration, depending on the design of their opponent.
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