It's on: Japan accepts giant-robot-duel challenge from US
If watching giant robots fight to the death sounds like your idea of a good time, then you're in luck. Two huge, Transformer-type bots 鈥� one from Japan, the other from the United States 鈥� could soon be facing off in the ultimate futuristic duel.
Last week, the geeks over at MegaBots 鈥� a Boston-based startup devoted to the art of聽聽鈥� challenged their one and only competitor, Suidobashi Heavy Industry of Japan, to a duel in a YouTube video. And Suidobashi just accepted the challenge.
The MegaBots team plans to show up to the fight with its Mark II robot, a 15-foot-tall (4.6 meters), manually piloted bot that can walk around and shoot supersized paintballs.听, named Kuratas, is a tad smaller at 13 feet (4 meters) tall, but it packs a more lethal punch with its onboard arsenal of rapid-fire BB guns. []
In the聽, two American flag-clad men describe the Mark II as "12,000 pounds [5,443 kilograms] of gasoline-powered fury," capable of firing 3-pound (1.4 kg) paintball cans at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour (161 km/h). But the folks at Suidobashi seem ready for the challenge. In a video response released yesterday (July 5), Suidobashi's founder, Kogoro Kurata, dons a Japanese flag and makes it clear he's not going down without a fight.
"We can't let another country win this. Giant聽聽are Japanese culture," Kurata says in the subtitled video.
Then he goes on to suggest an even cooler form of combat than the traditional duel 鈥� a melee. Why a melee? Well, Kurata said he'd like to punch the American robot down "to scrap." Those are some serious fighting words.
The two companies have yet to set a date for the epic battle, but the MegaBots video suggests that preparing both bots for combat could take about a year. Now it's up to the Suidobashi team to choose the location for what is sure to be a highly entertaining competition.
Follow Elizabeth Palermo @.听Follow Live Science聽,听听&补尘辫;听. Original article on聽.
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