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Launched in 2021, the Antarctique Rattrapante is enhanced by a surprising innovation that magnifies the beauty of the mechanism on the dial side: the metal face of a robot sculpted in titanium, hand-polished and then laser-engraved. As soon as the chronograph is activated, its eyes change colour: initially, they light up yellow (a nod to the Shrikes in the film Mortal Engines). When stopped, they glow red and when reset, they turn blue.
This is quite literally a nod to history, as we owe the word “robot” to a certain Karel Čapek (Czech spelling). Hence the idea for this rattrapante-with-robot. At the beginning of the 20th century, this intellectual was already concerned about scientific materialism. His play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) – in which mechanical men designed to work on assembly lines revolt against their human masters – criticises the dehumanising potential of science and technology.
In the early drafts of his play, Čapek named his creatures labori (from the Latin word for work), before adopting the Czech term roboti. Thanks to Čapek, the word robot took on the meaning we know today, and his play paved the way for dystopian universes such as Terminator and Blade Runner. A century later, his questions still resonate in our debates on automation, artificial intelligence, the cloud, trans-humanism...
Technically, the rattrapante is a hand superimposed exactly on the chronograph hand and which can be stopped by means of a 10 o’clock pusher, while the chronograph hand continues to run. While the rattrapante (aka split-second) mechanism is normally located under the calibre, the designers have literally turned it upside down to reveal its beauty.
In the new Antarctique Rattrapante R.U.R., produced in a 77-piece limited edition, the mechanism takes centre stage on the dial side. A central “tripod” bridge supports a satellite minute train and the rattrapante mechanism. Each half of the movement is visually anchored by a column wheel: one at 12 o’clock for the chronograph and one at 6 o’clock for the rattrapante.
With this device, the eye is often drawn to the movement of the hands. On the Antarctique Rattrapante R.U.R., the changing colour of the robot’s eyes draws attention directly to the complexity and beauty of the mechanism. The robot is placed on the chronograph’s column wheel, so that each click of the columns triggered by the activation of the stop-reset-start pushers results in a change of eye colour.
September 25, 2025