ubergizmo – May 11, 2016 – What could be more fun than seeing giant robots fight each other? There’s a startup called MegaBots that’s aiming to bring giant robot fighting to the mainstream, and for that purpose, the company has raised $2.4 million in seed funding. The startup wants this to become like a major sports association, think UFC or Formula 1, but with giant robots. That’s something many would pay good money to watch.
Using the $2.4 million in seed funding that it has raised, MegaBots is going to team up with a law firm to establish and roll out its robot fighting league internationally.
In case the company’s name sounds familiar, this is the very same company that challenged Suidobashi Heavy Industries of Japan to a duel. Both of them have giant robots so the challenge was a good idea to get the world out about this potential future sport.
Suidobashi Heavy Industries accepted the challenge and it’s believed to be working on a special edition of its Kuratas robot for the duel. Kuratas weighs more than 9,000 while the MegaBots’ MkII robot comes in at 12,000 pounds, the battle-ready version of this robot will be around 15,000 pounds.
MegaBots is yet to determine the date and venue where Team USA and Team Japan will take on each other, the company is looking at potential host countries and are in touch with governments across the globe who are interested in holding such an event, as well as organizing future tournaments.