MacGuffin was a heavyweight robot designed by Team Panic, which applied for BattleBots World Championship VI.
It was a wide, black and green robot armed with an angled plow at the front and twin vertical spinning drums on either side. The concept behind the design was for MacGuffin to be able to tank a box-rush from any opponent, and then punch with the drums by pivoting the robot left and right.
Team Panic's Ben Hayton has previous BattleBots experience as part of Gemini during World Championship IV. He split from the team to pursue his own heavyweight creation and entered Bolt a year prior, but were forced to withdraw. This time, Team Panic were rejected from the 2021 season.[1]
- "Unfortunately MacGuffin has been rejected for 2021, but that's not going to stop me, I'm still planning on doing a wooden mock-up to get comfortable with building at the HW scale."
- — Team Panic confirm their rejection from World Championship VI.
However, due to international travel restrictions being imposed again in Australia, Team Panic would have again been forced to withdraw from the competition regardless.
- "Australia has made a mess of its vaccine roll-out and has extended international travel bans into 2022. So even if we were accepted we would be unable to attend."
- — Ben Hayton on MacGuffin's ultimate fate.
Team Panic applied for World Championship VII with a brand new meltybrain spinner robot named ZAP.
Ben Hayton has also competed in lower weight class events with success over the years, competing in UK beetleweight web-series Bugglebots with AnnieRUOK and designing multiple 150g robots with the use of 3D printing.