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See Giant Robots Fight. US vs Japan Match On YouTube (cnbc.com)

AmiMoJo writes: Suidobashi Heavy Industries and MegaBots agreed to test their piloted giant robots in combat a few years back, and the content is finally available on YouTube. It ended in a draw, with Japan decisively winning the first bout with a single punch and the US team winning the second thanks to a chainsaw weapon. There have been some complaints that the whole event felt scripted, but it's early days yet. ITMedia has a nice gallery of photos from the event. "The MegaBots team expressed hope for a formal fighting robot league in the future," reports CNBC.

50 comments

  1. Too bad nobody got hurt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Too bad nobody got hurt, it would have demonstrated why human-piloted mecha isn't any less dangerous than traditional war machines.

  2. Wowwwwww. by shess · · Score: 5, Funny

    That was the lamest thing I've seen all day. And to set the bar, I'm a middle-aged dad who just got back from a Pokemon Go raid.

    1. Re:Wowwwwww. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Robot sumo is much better. The robots are affordable and you program them yourself.

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    2. Re:Wowwwwww. by Ogive17 · · Score: 3

      The 1-punch KO was quite funny.. however the build up was excessive and the mis-match in size and weaponry of the 2nd match made it a bit stupid.

      --
      "Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
    3. Re: Wowwwwww. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Blow it out your ass

    4. Re: Wowwwwww. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What if these robots sucked each other's cock, would you watch it?

    5. Re:Wowwwwww. by PoopJuggler · · Score: 0

      I supposed you've built a better mech?

    6. Re:Wowwwwww. by Joce640k · · Score: 2

      Could they possibly have given it a more annoying presentation?

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      No sig today...
  3. The whole event felt scripted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    That's because it was scripted. It's about as real as a WWE fight, and about four times more boring.

    1. Re:The whole event felt scripted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Focused to the american public, i.e., it was made as retarded as possible.

    2. Re:The whole event felt scripted by Somebody+Is+Using+My · · Score: 3, Informative

      More than just being scripted, it wasn't even real-time. The actual fight was filmed over multiple days. This was the most entertaining cut of all that work, which is rather sad. The moves were all pre-programmed and carefully choreographed. 30 years on and millions of dollars later and we still end up with something that looked significantly less impressive than the power-loader fight in Aliens and had just about as much verisimilitude.

    3. Re:The whole event felt scripted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Focused to the american public, i.e., it was made as retarded as possible.

      Haven't watched much/any Japanese gameshow TV, have you?

      Go to YouTube and do some searching/watching. Seriously. Some of the gameshows on Japanese TV are...just...wow.

  4. nomenclature by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    While mech fighting is certainly cool, these are absolutely not robots, and anyone who calls them such is worthy of being harshly admonished and/or reprehended.

    1. Re:nomenclature by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Better yet, apprehended. Chuck 'em in the brig!

    2. Re:nomenclature by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Penis prosthetic" is the technical term for it.

  5. Pathetic. How about a wheel loader fight? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wheel loader fight

    Done in under two minutes, without the 25 minutes of vapid hype from dressed-up twits wearing sunglasses inside.

  6. Thanks for the insto-spoiler jerk! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Haven't seen it. Would have liked to watch it without knowing winner.

    1. Re:Thanks for the insto-spoiler jerk! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Santa isn't real

  7. Well that sucked! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Totally lame obnoxious production with five minutes of "action". The camera work and narration made me nauseous.

  8. I couldn't take the excitement and closed my eyes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When the Japanese and American robots started moving towards each other rapidly at about 2 inches per minute and those amazing robotic arms started turning at about 15 degrees per minute, the excitement got the better of me. I even jumped off my couch and then sat on my cat accidentally. It is now in pet hospital.

  9. SPOILER ALERT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you want to watch the video, don't read the summary... Thanks >.>

  10. Skip ahead to the fighting, better than I expected by llZENll · · Score: 2

    Haha, the first punch is ridiculously dumb, KO. Just skip everything except the fighting, there are 2 matches in the video. The first is 2 seconds long. The second is actually kinda cool, it's at least funny, they do some damage and almost kill the annoying announcers, too bad they didn't. These kinds of things would be SO much better if they didn't overhype it like it's going to be so amazing.

  11. My Thoughts... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Before they "make it into a sports league" (as the ending of the video says) they need to:
    1) Remove the pilots from the cockpit
    2) Hook pilots up with VR and remotely control the mechs.
    3) All cameras and booms need to be remotely operated.
    4) Removal all personal from the area where the battle takes place.
    5) Replace fake paintball guns with real guns/cannons.
    6) Get rid of the script and let the bots really fight.

    Until that time, this is a waste of time. Thank god I fast forwarded to the actual fighting.

    Bonus points if you fire the color man, and have the sideline reporter do her interviews in a bikini...

  12. WTF was that?! by CustomBuild · · Score: 2

    Spoiler alert: That shit wasn't even a one punch affair. One bot passed gas and the other tipped him over! Seriously, this shit feels like the Geraldo Rivera fiasco of the 80s. A ton of build up, with no delivery.

  13. I saw the giant robots... by wjcofkc · · Score: 1

    But I did not see any fighting.

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    1. Re:I saw the giant robots... by Falconhell · · Score: 1

      Surley not everybody was kung fu fighting.

    2. Re:I saw the giant robots... by sysrammer · · Score: 1

      No, and don't call me Surley.

      --
      His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
  14. Disappointing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    1. Paintball gun? Really? Oh it *might* stop the cameras... riiiiight, maybe if half the paint balls didnt just fall out the barrel onto the floor.
    2. Continuing on the projectile weapons, the other ones were clearly pointless. Especially when poking the other robot with the barrel is a better option than shooting it.
    2. The red one just moves and punches stuff. OK, it managed to spin a bit of metal in a crap way.
    3. The fakeness "You are supposed to be the robotics expert" etc. Who made the video? You suck, whoever you are. Oh a draw, how convenient.

    This sucked, was not terribly entertaining, and was faker than dolly partons... everything.

  15. Robot Combat League on SyFy was better by OzPeter · · Score: 1

    I enjoyed this more, but just as scripted.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

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    1. Re: Robot Combat League on SyFy was better by Nidi62 · · Score: 1

      I'd settle for robots vs wrestlers from HIMYM

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  16. Re:Skip ahead to the fighting, better than I expec by leonbev · · Score: 1

    This series would be much better if they took the humans out of the cockpit and had them controlled by remote control or (eventually) AI.

    Once you don’t have to worry about accidently killing the driver, you can ramp up the robot violence up to something that you would expect to see on TV. Think Battlebots on a bigger scale, or the Real Steel movie.

  17. Not robot by Titanek · · Score: 1

    I'd call them mechs rather than robots. No AI, which I feel was implied they had.

  18. Proper link... by Vrallis · · Score: 2

    How about a good link that skips the bullshit and goes right to the fight? https://youtu.be/Z-ouLX8Q9UM?t...

    1. Re:Proper link... by sysrammer · · Score: 1

      Good enough. Always go with the chainsaw. Learned that long ago in that movie about Texans.

      --
      His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
  19. Something's missing by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1

    Where was the Shining Finger?

  20. If you want to skip through the video... by mejustme · · Score: 2

    From the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    First fight starts at 8:32. Fight is over at the very first punch at 8:55. I use "punch" loosely, as the robot just holds an arm out and runs forward into the 2nd one, knocking it over.

    Slow motion of the "punch" is at 10:26-11:00.

    Next fight with another robot starts around 13:20. Drone gets knocked out of the air at 14:18. Robot-on-robot hits around 15:00, after which they pause for round 2. Battle resumes at 20:00, this time with a chainsaw attachment. Chainsaw damage starts around 21:20. But it is low-speed, not very exciting. Knock some shit over at 22:04, and the whole thing ends at 22:30.

    1. Re:If you want to skip through the video... by pslytely+psycho · · Score: 1

      The sad part is, your description was far more exciting than the actual "fight."

      --
      Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
  21. Re:Pathetic. How about a wheel loader fight? by VeryFluffyBunny · · Score: 1

    Was just about to post the same video, different uploader: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Waaaayyyy more interesting than the slow, cumbersome robots. How about a rematch between Chinese loaders and those robots. Which do you think would win?

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  22. Re:Pathetic. How about a wheel loader fight? by sysrammer · · Score: 3, Funny

    There you go. For $200k-$2m and change you too can have a winning mech!

    One comment from a youtuber...
      "And here we see the rival males fighting for the right to mate. These battles are not deadly, but instead, a male that is pushed on his side has lost."

    --
    His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
  23. Elon musk vs Jeff Bezos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There would be a lot of spinoff technologies, if tech titans own the robot teams, pour money into research and bring it to formula car racing status. Lets cheer them..

  24. They wern't actually fighting by iCEBaLM · · Score: 1

    The biggest problem is they wern't actually fighting each other. They wern't actually trying to damage the other guy, and it just felt fake as hell, because it was. One of the highlights was a robot pushing over a stack of cars, or a lighting rig, seriously?

  25. Re:Pathetic. How about a wheel loader fight? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And those off-the-shelf machines could have beat any of the purpose-built fighting bot easily.

  26. I don't get it by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 2

    I am certainly not interested in Transformers-like robots, fights (of robots) or similar. I cannot even imagine that what is being shown in that video could trigger reactions like what any similar enough event could do. But all this might even be ignored to understand the point I am trying to make here.

    I have always had serious difficulties to understand this kind of businesses requiring a huge amount of funding and eventually (if at all) having some profit which can rarely compensate that initial funding; in fact, this is usually a way to get even more funding?! Perhaps this is because I am (kind of) poor and because losing more than earning doesn't seem too logical to me. Perhaps because I have had horrible experiences with financial/money-lending institutions, with their impatience, unmotivatedly pushy behaviours and their absolute lack of understanding about almost anything (they give you 3, expect 5 in return and very quickly; in case of not getting it, they start having bully-like attitudes by spending in that process even more than the profit of 2 that they were expecting to get! And all that for not-too-big, even small amounts! I know that these extreme behaviours are common in my area/country, but not everywhere; even though they seem quite descriptive of what these people are usually up to). So, I have serious problems to picture what is somehow common in certain areas like Silicon Valley or businesses backed by huge amount of VC capital. Even despite all that, this seems a new upper limit for me on this let's say peculiar approach to the world.

    I did a quick research and this company seems to have a maximum audience of around 250K people (what they claim and about the number of subscribers in their Youtube channel; in other social media, their numbers are much lower). They seem to have got various millions of dollars in funding from companies like Autodesk (for promoting AutoCAD?). They have a Kickstarter campaign to fund this specific battle, where they got a bit over $500M. Their whole business model seems to be focused on selling merchandising and making these videos. Their expenses seem to be quite big, not just to build all the robots (currently looking for hiring engineers for various positions) but also to gain all this visibility. Just by taking this battle as an example, they spent 3 years to be in a position to record that 30 min. video!

    It seems that their ultimate goal is to be the pioneers in what they think that will be the very lucrative business of robot fights. To have an impression of what this might imply, let's take as a reference professional wrestling. Apparently, it went though a quite long and difficult process before becoming popular/profitable; although nowadays and with enough money the process might certainly be much quicker, something like 10-20 years under ideal conditions? Let's imagine for one second that robot fights have already reached that stage of popularity and that battles like the one shown in that video might attract millions of fans. This is the ideal output for all this, the final prize justifying the huge invested amounts and all the effort. Even by assuming that this point is actually reachable and that all the losses to get there are affordable, the question is: could seriously this format become profitable at all? Professional wrestling seems profitable, but not extremely profitable; I guess that the most successful investors, managers, fighters, etc. are reasonably wealthy but this is it. And that is the maximum aspiration of robot fights: getting as much attention as the human equivalent. The problem with robots is that they imply much higher expenses than people; I don't know, something like 100 times, 1000 times more? They need specific conditions, highly specialised staff to build, fix, improve them; there are huge entrance barriers for new fighters (and without contenders you don't have battles or a tournament or anything even remotely attractive for your a

    --
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    1. Re:I don't get it by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 2

      CLARIFICATION: I think that all my bad experiences with these stupid, lending-a-bit-of-money-unreasonably-pushing-and-losing-everything mobster-wannabes have been very positive for me. They have completely opened my eyes on quite a few fronts. Actually, my current clarity of ideas owes quite a lot to all this (and other) pushy people. I used to be too understanding, generous and to expect too much from virtually anyone; that behaviour used to make me waste lots of energy and to be systematically disappointed. Now, I am sure that some people cannot understand/appreciate things as I do, that their whole world means nothing to me, and this helps me to focus my efforts on what/who really matters to me. I am not trying to be cynical or to generically criticise a huge number of people; I am just clearly describing my ideas, what I don't like and what will never tolerate. Note that I have always had a live-and-let-live kind of approach and that, other than for being a descriptive example to help explain my point, I don't care about that company, their expectations and how they get their money.

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    2. Re:I don't get it by GuB-42 · · Score: 1

      I don't know about Megabots but Kuratas actually sells their robots on Amazon for about 1 million dollars.
      https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E6%B...

      I can see them renting their robots for various shows, I think Megabots and Kuratas both do this. The duel is just advertisement.

    3. Re:I don't get it by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      I don't know about Megabots but Kuratas actually sells their robots on Amazon for about 1 million dollars. https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E6%2...... [amazon.co.jp]

      Are there people willing to pay $1 million for that robot?! Wow!! In any case, this does seem like a reasonably profitable business model. Just building the robots which you can sell sounds still a bit weird but at least makes some sense.

      I can see them renting their robots for various shows, I think Megabots and Kuratas both do this. The duel is just advertisement.

      I visited the Megabots website, their Kickstarter page and did a quick research and couldn't find any reference to sales; they are mostly referring to the future of robot fights, videos and merchandising. I don't know how things are in Japan, but it doesn't seem that this kind of product (at $1 million!!) has an actual market in the USA (or almost anywhere).

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
  27. Re:Pathetic. How about a wheel loader fight? by pslytely+psycho · · Score: 1

    Now that was cool.
    Of course the dueling robots were cool too, but in a "I'm freezing to death in the mountains and I can feel the frostbite setting in" sort of cool.....

    --
    Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
  28. Status Quo by AlanObject · · Score: 1

    The more it evolves the more it stays the same. Shinji still isn't going to get to have sex with Asuka.

  29. Hey watch this awesome event... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That you'll love, but oh, in the description let's tell you how it turns out.

    Really?!

    Props for the link, at the same time F' AmiMoJo for spoilers and F' the editor for not doing his/her job.

  30. Somewhat Expected but Even Worse! by foxalopex · · Score: 1

    To be honest, I didn't have much faith in it as soon as they announced that the Bots would be piloted by live humans. It right away means that they won't be fighting to destruction or using any weapons that could potentially kill the pilot for obvious reasons. Unfortunately it also means it would probably be boring! It probably also didn't help that they had announcers who were cheering property damage over actual fighting. (Imagine boxers punching the ring and environment instead of each other!) I actually liked the first battle the best because it was highly realistic. I think the winning Bot had something like 4x the horsepower of the other, was smaller and lighter and not top heavy which lead to the single KO punch.

    And if you were really serious about fighting, I would have bought an old WWII tank although results probably wouldn't have been good for my opponent. After all there's good reason why our military doesn't use Mechs.

    At the end of the day, this idea doesn't work. Go back to using remotely driven and creatively designed drones.