| abstract | - S.M.I.D.S.Y. (which stood for Sorry Mate I Didn't See You) was a heavyweight robot, which competed from Series 3-7, also competing in both series of Extreme. The team formed over the internet, built the robot over six weekends and apparently spent six weeks talking about it afterwards. "As 1998 drew to a close, a bunch of about twenty motorcyclists who are among the subscribers of a mailing list for UK bikers called IXION started talking about the Robot Wars series which was airing on BBC TV at the time. Motorcyclists are by nature people who build and modify machines, so it was only a matter of time before a heated discussion about the design shortcomings of the on-screen robots threw up the question-"Why don’t we have a go at Robot Wars ourselves?". Like I said, it all seemed like such a good idea at the time. After a lot of heated email discussions and a meeting in a rather good pub in Oxford, we all threw £20 into the kitty to give ourselves a fighting fund and set to designing our robot." — Team Ixion website on the origins of S.M.I.D.S.Y. Although it never escaped the heats of a series, S.M.I.D.S.Y. was one of the most successful robots not to pass the heats, reaching the Heat Final three times in five attempts.
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