USA versus Japan with 12 ton 430 horse power Giant robots

USA Eagle Prime is taking on Japan’s Suidobashi megabot.

MegaBots, Inc (USA) and Suidobashi Heavy Industry (Japan) have spent the past two years preparing real-life Giant Fighting Robots for a science-fiction inspired BATTLE OF THE CENTURY! The GIANT ROBOT DUEL will be is dropping now October 17th, 2017, at 7PM Pacific at http://go.twitch.tv/megabotsinc

In the summer of 2015, MegaBots, inc. completed construction of the USA’s first giant piloted mech. The Mk. II MegaBot is a 15-foot tall, 12,000lb robot capable of hurling 3lb projectiles at speeds of over 130 MPH.

Upon completion of the Mk. II, MegaBots challenged the only other known giant piloted robot in the world to a duel. A 9,000lb robot known as KURATAS created by a group in Japan known as Suidobashi Heavy Industries.

Coming to you October 17th 2017

After two years of breakthrough science and engineering, MegaBots and Suidobashi are finally ready to bring the world the battle of the century. The all-new MegaBots Mk. III robot is a fully combat capable 12-ton, 430-horsepower steel crushing beast. Strap in and get ready. Things are about to get absurdly epic.

Watch live video from MegaBotsInc on www.twitch.tv

11 thoughts on “USA versus Japan with 12 ton 430 horse power Giant robots”

  1. After roughly 3 years of waiting for that…I am a little dissapointed….but I still have hope for the genre, but there would have to be a few rule changes.

    1) remove the drivers and put the operators and camera crews at a safe distance….this would allow truly aggressive combat and not the scripted shlock we saw here…I’m all for a bit of theater..but I think the point of robot combat is that it can actually be super-aggressive vs its human analogs.

    2) they ought to have a rule set about how much ground contact the robots can have related to their weight. This was essentially a battle between two large tractors..and felt a little less like robots than I think the spirit it was trying to channel

    3) get actual STEM people involved…students, teachers…etc. Their “experts” seemed little more than talking heads and I was much more interested in what the designers had to say about the robots than the personalities that tried to fill the gap.

    4) single round combat. there simply would not be time between rounds to recover these things should any serious mishap befall them…maybe enter 3 robots or something (though expensive) but simulated rounds that are days apart seem kinda corny…It would be like having a race where you can actually go back to the factory and build a new car.

    • I recall that in Battlebots (First time around.) we were rather frustrated at the weapons limitations due to having a studio audience protected by a mere inch of Lexan. (Which got penetrated on at least one occasion!) We’d been talking, too, about remote battles with more interesting weapons like burning bars and shaped charges.

      You’re talking an expensive sport here, though, and bipedal robots are just not an optimal solution for war machines.

      • bipedal robots are just not an optimal solution for war machines.

        Depends what you are trying to optimise for.

        If the limiting factor on success in war is say the tactical effectiveness of your combat units, then yes you end up designing tanks and drones like everyone already is doing.

        BUT if the limiting factor on success in war is willingness of your population to vote for expenditure and to endure casualties, (which is what has proved to be the deciding factor in industrialized countries since about the 1960s)…

        THEN, you might find that having giant humanoid robots, despite being only a fraction as tactically useful as a boring old tank, get 10 times the budget because the voters think they are cool and exciting to watch.

        It will also confuse the hell out of your Islamic fundamentalists and North Korean communists when they get attacked by giant humanoid robots, robo-Godzillas, and robo-my-little-ponies.

        • But then, if they go up against anybody who’s got remotely the same budget, and spent it more wisely, they’ll lose.

          The reason I brought that up in this context, is that, if you’re having a mecha competition, because mechas aren’t actually a good combat solution, anybody who is designing one to win is going to design a mecha that’s as little like a mecha as possible.

          And more like a tank.

  2. “The whole “combat” felt scripted, clunky, and quite boring.”

    That’s physics for you. There are sound engineering reasons that giant mecha aren’t practical. Scaling laws, strength of materials. If you poured enough money into it, those particular mecha were small enough to maybe do something interesting, but I doubt they had the budgets to make them more than mobile props.

  3. I’m sorry if it insults people, but the comparisons to adolescent programming such as arena wrestling and those guys in the oversized trucks is accurate. It’s just ‘hype’ dramatic programming, with constantly cutting camera angles and an annoying announcer.

  4. I saw it… it was underwhelming. Lots of hype, very little action. The whole “combat” felt scripted, clunky, and quite boring.

  5. Man, this is just carnival entertainment stuff – like WWE or monster trucks – this isn’t the “next big future” of robotics.

    • Actually, now that I think about it – this is probably what you’d get by combining WWE with monster trucks.

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