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Robot SmackDowns Wants To Bring Robot Death Matches To an Arena Near You
Business Insider profiles Andrew Stroup, Gui Cavalcanti and Matt Oehrlein, who are trying to get off the ground a robot competition league, called Robot SmackDowns. The idea, as you might guess from the name, is to showcase violence and drama to draw on the crowd-appeal of wrestling, NASCAR, and monster truck rallies: this is definitely not Dean Kamen's FIRST — it's giant mechanical beasts shooting at and otherwise trying to destroy each other. And it's not quite right to call them robots in the usual sense; they're more like mecha: "In a MegaBots battle, a two-member team sits inside the bot's upper torso, where the controls systems are housed. Although the co-founders assure me that the pilot and gunner are well protected inside, the situation presents a heightened suspense. Each 15,000-pound robot is equipped with six-inch cannons inside its arms that fire paint-filled missiles and cannon balls at 120 miles per hour. Good aim can cause enough damage to jam its opponent's weapons system or shoot off a limb." They'll be launching a Kickstarter campaign soon; according to the article, "Assuming it raises enough money to build a fleet, [the company's] plan is to take the bots on the road. They will tour the country, face off in epic battles against other MegaBots, and build a fan base. Stroup says (without giving specifics) networks have reached out and will closely watch how MegaBot, Inc.'s upcoming Kickstarter campaign performs. The possibilities for distribution seem endless, though the team is tight-lipped about the exact direction it's headed."
everyone wants a fighting robot league...it's like jetpacks, hover boards, and other stuff featured in sci fi depictions of "the future"
fighting robots are awesome...this is not in dispute...
here are the 3 most salient factors as to when we will have a fighting robots league:
1. technology...especially materials science...we've gotten to the point conceptually that we can model any form of robot, but it's making the materials stand the stress, and batteries to power it...those are our limitations now
2. $$$...fighting robots are expensive...a league needs money
3. competition > PR...they have to be the opposite of MLS or WWE...this has to be done right and not over marketed or over simplified (how it can go wrong: something like the random narrator voice in Mythbusters)
this is your formula for a robot fighting league
Thank you Dave Raggett
I'm torn between "We spared no expense" and "God help us, we're in the hands of engineers".
Are these the first steps toward the wars of the future?
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Why stop here? Can we please just outfit them with real guns and explosives, make them remote controlled and duke it out somewhere far far away from humans?
In what sense can an armed and armored mechanical vehicle operated by a human pilot and human gunner be termed a "robot"?
Such things were new in France a century ago.
Why even have people inside? Make the whole thing remotely controlled.
Oh, I know, "drama"... pfffft, lemmings
..and you get to be corporate America's labrats.
"networks have reached out and will closely watch how MegaBot, Inc.'s upcoming Kickstarter campaign performs."
Let's see how many gullible saps throw their own money away before we gladhand our way in with millions and 'kickstart"' them to the curb. Anyone remember Ouya? Oh yeah..
seems like a ripoff of Robot Combat League that was on Sci-fi -1-2 years back
With the Battlebots/Robot Wars of the '90s. They quickly settled into two robot designs, the flipper and the spinner, that basically always ended up with the same result, the flippers usually won.
Let's hope they make it so there's enough chaos and variability so there are more than two equilibrium points with the robots.
But what made those old shows fun was that almost anyone could join, not just people with the deepest pockets. A 15000 pound robot isn't something everyone can afford, the material cost alone, never mind where you're gonna put the stupid thing.
Sure, I guess there's just going to be a really big 3D printer there and the teams just email their designs before each fight, right?
The Robot Combat League was fairly interesting given the limitations of the machinery that they are using.
The technology of Robot Smack Downs would have to surpass that of the Robot Combat League by a pretty large margin before it became half decent, and I don't see that happening any time soon.
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No need to throw your sabots into the whole process.
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Slapping some armour and an axe onto an RC car doesn't make it a robot; it is just an RC car with anger management issues. For a real robot battle the robots should be fully autonomous; they enter the ring, are activated, and have at each other. I suspect that the first generation would mostly just go straight into a corner and hack at the wall. But with enough prise money AI routines would start to creep in and then it could get interesting. I would love to see them adapt to damage, or take advantage of their opponent's damage.
The only sad part would be if this is where genuine AI was born.
This is how you know the current site demographic is just too young.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
It looks interesting, but why in the world are they piloted mechs? Remote control them with a simulated cockpit so you don't have to make a bunch of convoluted rules so no one is injured. If things take off and the tech improves you can also ramp things up from a simple paintball game type setup to bots that can actually inflict damage.
Yeah, tanks a lot.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Robot death matches won't really be interesting until they become self-aware, and they realize we're having them kill each other for our amusement.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It was very entertaining, and fun to see people come up with brilliant (and not so brilliant) solutions.
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As long as these are real death matches, where the pilots of the losing team die actual deaths, it should make for a good show.
That's a terrible name. What are they, fourteen?
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
Or, Battletech.
--- Pork is not a verb.
Anybody else remember this game? Sounds alot like it.
I feel like this has nothing to do with "robots" as the submitted story pretty much outlined, I do not see this going anywhere, not because of that but because it will become redundantly repetitive, but then again you have idiots that keep going to fake wrestling shows, racing events, ect.
However the other Robotic battle events died out, obviously they are still around but there were not enough people, TV channel(s). Those events or those that organized them thought their events would garner enough attention to become fan hoarding events.
Really they stole it from a movie, and I doubt that it would garner any major fan/crowd base, it would be as stupid as watching paint ball competitions. B-O-R-I-N-G.... This is the crap that shouldn't be on kickstarter. But we live in a country of idiots so I wouldn't be surprised to watch it raise money then disappear soon after it gets started.
Somebody watched Robot Jox too many times.
Battlebots was boring after the first season. This sounds more like Robot Jox or real-life Mechwarrior with restricted weaponry. Remember that movie? Yeah... guess I'm old now. Screw it, giant robots with humans in them shooting and beating the s**t out of each other sounds pretty cool to me! What the hell are you going to power it with though?
I was anally raped by barb wire by a group of Germans. The tradition of raping people with barb wire is a long-standing German tradition.
My mother had a piece of barb wire stuck up her vagina by one of those Republicans while she was expecting me. Fortunately she didn't have an abortion which is what they wanted.
No need to throw your sabots into the whole process.
Indeed. But sabot rounds would be acceptable.
... Robot Wars (as in the British television series back in the late 90s), except with people inside? I thought that was a pretty good show, but then, I was a teenager at the time, so of course I would think that.
Now if there was some way to hook up SWTOR's combat system with HK-51 to these robots, and have players control them in real time, this could be cool.
This enterprise does not have widespread mainstream appeal, and it never will. It is too geeky to succeed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
War has become too destructive of lives, yet we can't seem to stop. Let's go back to those naval dreadnaughts of WWI and WWII; let them have great battles offshore, where people could watch, only remote/robotically controlled.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.