Let’s face it, we love the fights. Whether it be boxing, good old wrastlin’, or the more brutal MMA scene, humans have long been fans of seeing each other step into the ring and go toe to toe. A few years ago, the movie Real Steel – starring Hugh Jackman – took a look at a fighting robot sports league. Now MegaBots, Inc. has launched a Kickstarter campaign to bring a robot fighting sports league to reality. You know, because “giant freaking robots!”
MegaBots, Inc. isn’t just a Kickstarter to build a 15 foot tall fighting robot, it’s a Kickstarter to build enough fully functional fighting robots to actually start an arena league. If the base goal amount is met, two fully functional robots can be built and will face off in a 1 versus 1 death match. The robots will be piloted by humans, and will shoot cannonball sized projectiles filled with paint at each other.
MegaBots will be covered in customizable, breakaway armor plating and fire cannonball-sized, paint-filled projectiles at each other at speeds topping 120 miles per hour. As projectiles hit their targets, armor plates shatter and explode, and computers tally critical hits to the robot’s limbs and torso. As more and more hits are taken, robots start to limp, joints start to seize, weapons start to jam, and after enough damage, limbs are completely blown off. The last MegaBot standing wins!
To date, the three founders have assembled a team of over 20 engineers, technicians, designers, artists, and others to create a partially functioning prototype.
We’ve spent the past four months making the prototype upper body and arm of a MegaBot, a prototype gun emplacement, two weapon systems and more to prove out the technology we’ve spent the past two years designing.
The concepts are very reminiscent of movies like Real Steel and games like Mechwarrior and Titanfall. While the prototype is functional, it is still just half a mech and it will be interesting to see how well it performs once it is fully constructed. Given recent videos released by Google and Boston Dynamics of their Atlas robot though, it looks like MegaBots, Inc. are on the right track.
Check out the MegaBots promotional video below:
If you like what you see, there’s still time to get involved – with 11 days to go the Kickstarter still has a long way to go to their goal of $1.8 million. Hopefully they can reach it, I for one am all for some robot fighting action! Heck, I know if I had a spare $999,999 kicking around I’d definitely cough it up for my very own MegaBot.
Do you think they can pull it off? Would you go see, or better yet want to pilot, MegaBots in arena fighting action? Let us know in the comments below or on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter!
[button link=”https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/megabots/megabots-live-action-giant-robot-combat” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: MegaBots Kickstarter[/button]Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
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