IMAGE: S.N. JACOBSON
A dozen movie and TV robot fantasies are about to come to fruition: Two giant robots, one from Japan and one from the United States, will battle until only one is left standing.
A dozen movie and TV robot fantasies are about to come to fruition: Two giant robots, one from Japan and one from the United States, will battle until only one is left standing.
Japanese robotics company Suidobashi Heavy Industries has accepted MegaBots' challenge to a giant real, live giant robot battle on a undetermined date. Both companies make multi-ton mech-style robots that are controlled by humans who ride inside. (The presence of outside operators are also yet to be determined.)
The face-off is a way for MegaBots to promote its newest mech, MegaBot Mark II, which the company calls "America's first full-functional, giant piloted robot." It has some pretty big guns that can shoot paintballs at a car-denting 100 mph.
Suidobashi founder and CEO Kogoro Kurata seemed surprised by the challenge — which he readily accepted — and mocked the MegaBot's choice of weaponry. "Come on guys, make it cooler. Just building something huge and sticking guns on it. It's... super American," he says in the video. Kurata accurately notes that giant robots are part of Japan's heritage. One of the first cartoons I ever saw was Japan's Gigantor, a manga-style show that launched in 1964.
The two robots are pretty evenly matched. MegaBot Mark II is 15 feet tall and rolls around on a pair of giant tank treads. Suidobashi's mech is 13 feet tall and uses four swiveling wheels.
But there are some big differences. MegaBot Mark II cost about $175,000 to build and weighs 12,000 pounds; Suidobashi's sells for more than $1 million and is about 9,000 pounds. "[Suidobashi] is about three times faster than we are," MegaBots cofounder Gui Cavalcanti said. "Their tech is currently more advanced, but we have about a year to catch up. I think it’ll even out."
Cavalcanti, a former Boston Dynamics engineer, answered some of our questions about the upcoming bout. (He's the guy on the left in the challenge video.)
Mashable: When and where will the duel be held?
We don’t know [when] yet. They threw the ball back in our court. We're working in it. But we’d like it to be neutral territory, honestly, as opposed to just in the U.S. or in Japan. So we have to figure out where in the world that might be.
How long might the duel last?
How long might the duel last?
Probably much longer than conventional robot fighting. I don’t know if you’ve watched BattleBots. The action happens pretty fast. With so much mass moving around, this will be slower and it’ll take a little while.
Will there be rounds?
Will there be rounds?
We’re hoping for rounds, but we don’t know all the details yet.
IMAGE: MEGABOTS INC
How much autonomy do these robots have?
They are moved around by us. We use the Robot OS; Suidobashi uses V-SIDO. The operating systems interpret motions of drivers and turn them into multi-joint movements. It’s not fully autonomous; it’s robotically-aided motion, a step above being inside an Earth-mover.
Do both robots have only one human operator inside?
They have one, we have two. Matt Oehrlein and I are both in the cockpit. I’m the driver of the MegaBot and he’s the gunner. He does swiveling of the body and aiming of the weapons and I control the motion of the robot.
IMAGE: MEGABOTS INC.
How will you know when someone has won?
According to [Suidobashi's] video, it’s when we’re beaten to a pile of scrap on the ground.[Laughs.] So I think we still need to work that out.
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