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[translation mine] A US company wants to compete with the giant robot of a Japanese competitor. However, they're apparently lacking the money to complete their own battle machine. Now they're turning to patriots for help.
For the representatives of the company MegaBots, there is nothing more beautiful than robots that tear each other to pieces. "Your childhood dreams have come - can you hear them knocking?", asks the speaker in a video on Kickstarter. As though it were unthinkable, that someone could find a duel of nations in highly stylized robot battle dubious or completely superfluous. A battle advertised with slogans like "Together we can conquer Japan!"
In practice it's not about real declarations of war, but a robot duel between the US company MegaBots and the Japanese company Suidobashi Heavy Industry. At the end of July, MegaBots challenged its competitor from the Far East to pit their model named Kurata against MegaBots' Mk.II in the summer of 2016.
MegaBots is hoping to raise $500,000 on Kickstarter to fund their robot. Are they hoping for a Reality TV show?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @09:09AM
The market for robot on robot combat is small. TV shows are notorious for small budgets. I hope enthusiasts will sponsor a team on the revival of the TV show Battlebots, instead of putting money into Megabots.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday August 21 2015, @04:00PM
Don't worry, it would take a TV genius to make more than one episode of "big slow robot lines up and uses cannon on other big slow robot/ High-speed cam declares the US winner by 0.003 s"
There's a reason NO military uses giant robots.
(Score: 2) by mrchew1982 on Friday August 21 2015, @11:03PM
As I understand the dialog between the two companies involved the Japanese company essentially saying, "you need to use something besides big guns in the battle." As I understand Japanese law firearms of any sort are inaccessible to the public.
The exact wording was: “Just building something huge and sticking guns on it. It’s… super American.” and "Make it cooler."
http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2015/07/07/japanese-company-accepts-robot-duel-challenge-from-u-s/ [wsj.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @04:32PM
The point should be who can make the most powerful robot at the cheapest price. Sure, if the U.S. puts more money into it they can win. But it would be embarrassing if a $500 K American robot lost to a 10K Japanese robot. Then again perhaps the cost of labor in Japan is different but still. Isn't the point of having an American made device allegedly that you get better quality in exchange for paying more? Shouldn't we attempt to compete on providing more quality for the additional amount of money you spend when compared to spending the same amount of money somewhere else. Countries should try to compete on how much bang you get for your buck. This shouldn't be a war of who can build the most expensive robot and raise the most money. It should be a war of who can build the best robot given an equivalent amount of resources expended. That's where intellect comes in. Throwing more money at the problem is just brute force.
It's similar to how we compete on building more powerful processors. Yes we can always build a more powerful processor by stringing together more less powerful processors. But the metric is who can build a better processor that uses less energy (for cheaper though you want to first start out with something before making it cheaper).
(Score: 4, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday August 21 2015, @08:47PM
First off; its not a robot, its a mech. A robot is autonomous, capable of following programmed instructions with out human intervention. This thing needs a pilot for it to do anything. (I know, I know, everyone calls them robots, its a pet peeve that i need to take out every now and then so it gets its RDA of vitamin D)
Second; wasn't it the US team that issued the original challenge? Now it seems like it was just a ploy to get PR so they could get money to finish the mech that should have been finished before they issued the challenge.
Third; WTF? the only link in the summary is to a German site. I guess martyb didn't bother to consider that many, if not most, of the Soylent readers are not able to read German. Need to work on that a bit martyb.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."