Robot Wars: Meet the contestants

Of course the House Robots will be returning, but new presenters Dara O Briain and Angela Scanlon are fresh on the battlefield.

Gird your loins, because this week's contestants are looking pretty deadly...

Behemoth

Hailing from Hertfordshire, this bulldozer-shaped robot has a pneumatic lifting scoop so mighty that it can lift a Peugeot 205 off the ground, or even tow a Land Rover. But despite all that muscle, Behemoth’s thin side armour could let it down.

Carbide

Carbide has a lethal spinning blade made from military strength steel. At 25kg and 85cm long, the impact of a hit from Carbide’s blade has 60 times more energy than a sniper bullet. But worryingly, it’s never been tested as battle as its creators didn’t want to take the risk.

Kill-E-Crank-E

This two-wheeled Scottish robot has a much lighter vertical spinner than Carbide, but it spins at 450 rpm (about the same rate as a typical helicopter blade). The spinning disk itself has three cobalt-edged bi-directional teeth. Ouch.

Razor

Imagine being crushed by a hippo. The pressure of Razor’s hydraulic piercer is worse than that. This iconic robot was created in 1998, and has one the most battles – 41 – of any robot to compete on the show.

Bonk

Fancy a bo- ? Oh no never mind. This robot has a sharpened axe which slices through armour and bruises other robots’ insides. If Bonk does manage to penetrate and its axe gets stuck inside the enemy, it could lift the whole robot up and carry it around.

The General

This four-wheel drive has two front-mounted vertical spinning discs. The General was built in the family’s milking parlour, with its design based on an army tank. It is made almost exclusively from parts found around the creator's farm.

Nuts

This crazy robot has chains with weights on the end attached to each wheel. When it spins on the spot the chains whip around with it, which sounds absolutely terrifying. Nuts has a couple of evil sidekicks too, called ‘clusterbots’, that wedge underneath their enemies to move them into the main robot’s path.

Terrorhurtz

Terror does hurt, yeah. And with the biggest axe in the competition, this robot can certainly do some harm. The axe is 90cm long and fires at 100mph, generating a tonne of force. The team’s axe is intentionally blunt, to ensure maximum trauma. Help.

Robot Wars is on BBC2 tonight at 8pm