British scientists invent robotic "welly wanger"
By Evan Blass 
posted Aug 24th 2006 3:35PM
posted Aug 24th 2006 3:35PM
With robots having already mastered such mainstream athletic activities as baseball, football, soccer (a.k.a. the "other" football), golf, and, um, foosball, it was only a matter of time before they became adept at lesser known sports such as bowling and Wellington Boot Throwing. A staple of British fashion since the early 19th century, the Wellington Boot (or gumboot, as it's sometimes called) eventually inspired a rather unique sporting event commonly referred to as "welly wanging" (we're not making this up -- it's even in Wikipedia, so it must be true), where the goal is to toss or kick the boot as far as possible. Well it seems that a team of scientists from Aberystwyth University were commissioned by the TV show "Scrapheap Challenge" to build a robotic welly wanger that could hurl the famous footwear even farther than the most adept Olympic shotputter, and by all accounts, they met with unbridled success. Their solution involved hooking a homemade propeller up to an engine from a concrete mixer and a gearbox from a Citroen 2CV, with the whole contraption controlled by three computers calculating such vital variables as wind speed and the propeller's RPMs. The robotic welly wanger is capable of hurling a boot as far as 242-feet, which must be be pretty damn impressive if it got a write-up by the BBC. Oh, and readers, let's see if we can go a whole robot-themed post without someone "welcoming our new welly-wanging overlords" in the comments section, m'kay?[Via Slashdot]
Only if you guys can go a whole day without using the term "deets" in a post.
I agree with the sea creature!
I for one welcome the new enforced rules to not welcome welly-wanged robots!
Beware! The Welly-Wangering Cyborgs are among us!
*Gets hit by a boot from 242 feet away*
D'oh!
I for one welcome our welly wanging overlords... now they can punish us from a distance (by wanging the welly, doh!)while they oversee us performing the menial tasks that they were once created to do...
Oh please, don't be such a bunch of wangers!
I for one DO NOT welcome our new Welly-Wanging overlords. In fact, I think they should all go home. However, the Belly-Bangers are more than acceptable.
Captain Lumpy Dog, Away!!!
I, for one welcome our british boot-throwing-deathbot-overlords
let's see if you can go a day without having some smarta$$ limey correcting the particulars of a story with a British interest.
No... that didn't last long: welly-wanging is a throwing only event - no kicking whatsoever.
well done on spelling Aberystwyth correctly though.
This event was one of the key parts of our school sports day when I was a kid. I seem to remember practising my wanging skils at home, in the weeks leading up to the day :D
isn't Aberystwyth in wales?
What the hell is it with this 'm'kay' crap? What does it mean? Surely it's quicker to just write 'okay'? Or am I missing something?
Wow, I've just finished every sentence with a question mark, haven't I?
yes, Aberystwyth is in Wales (which is one of the three constituent parts of Britain, or one of the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland, to give it the full name).
m'kay is surely a South Park reference. Hence it's funny. Hence it's worth taking those extra milliseconds to type it.
everyone who posts on here is so negative.
Clearly, the welly wangers will never be the overlords. They'll be the servants cleaning Hubo's boots.
(Mind-boggling statistic: a search on Google for "robotic overlords site:engadget.com" finds over 2,000 hits.)