Further Reading American and Japanese mechs set to duel for supremacy

OAKLAND, Calif.—The mad roboticists behind MegaBots, the ambitious project that brought a mech to life , now have launched a Kickstarter campaign in preparation for their upcoming 2016 battle with a rival Japanese team and its “Kuratas” bot.

The group hopes to raise $500,000, with a “stretch goal” of $1.5 million. As of this writing the team has raised over $80,000. So why should fans donate?

“Because we’re going to make history, and it will be the most patriotic dollars that they can spend in 2015,” Brinkley Warren, a co-founder, told Ars with pride.

And what will that money buy? First and foremost, the Mk. II (“Mark Two”) will now have an eight-foot chainsaw for an arm.

“And dual Gatling guns coming out of giant eagle heads coming out of the shoulders,” Warren added.

Or as the group describes it on its Kickstarter page:

Meeting our $500,000 goal means that we get to seriously overhaul the Mk.II. We'll build the ridiculously cool weapon systems you see in our concept art, add the shock-mounted steel armor we need to survive multi-ton punches, beef up our hydraulic actuators to handle the additional weight of our armor and weapons, upgrade our power unit to provide 5x the horsepower to handle the additional power demands of our new hydraulic system, and then work with Howe & Howe Technologies to build a custom track base replacement that'll make us 5x faster than we are now - which will end up making us 2x faster than KURATAS!

Warren told Ars that the teams are currently accepting a “neutral location” (eg, not North America or Japan) to host the first battle.

“One of our dreams is to do it on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,” he said.







MegaBots

MegaBots

MegaBots

MegaBots

S.N. Jacobson

More power

Since Maker Faire, the MegaBots team has re-iterated to Ars that they hope to create a new global sport, which eventually would have two-on-two or tag team-style play in large arenas.

So how will one bot be anointed the winner in the first battle?

“The loser is either going to stop working, it’s going to fall over, or they’re going to tap out,” he said.

Recall, the Mk. II will have two human pilots in the cockpit—facing down a huge chainsaw with metal flying is no joke.

“It’s definitely going to be dangerous, no question,” Warren said.

One of the donors so far includes Michael Mauldin, a co-founder of the '90s-era search engine, Lycos, who has also been involved in robots for many years. He’s already donated $20,000 so that he and his wife can go to the 2016 battle and be part of the “pit crew.”

“It’s cheaper than building my own million dollar robot,” he told Ars, explaining that it wasn’t so long ago that these kinds of battle bots weighted hundreds of pounds, and cost much less to build.

“These guys are talking multiple tons, and I’m from Texas, and bigger is better.”