Robot fight between Japan and US to be seen next Wednesday

On Wednesday night, October 18, the long-awaited robot fight between the American MegaBots and the Japanese Suidobashi Heavy Industry can be seen. The battle of the titans, which spans several rounds, will be broadcast via Twitch.

It is not a live broadcast, the robot competition has been fought before. Because the match took place over several laps and the teams were given time in between to make repairs, a live broadcast was not possible. MegaBots reported this to The Verge.

The match will be broadcasted on the MegaBots Twitch channel starting at 4 a.m. Wednesday. The video is hosted by MMA commentator Mike Goldberg and robot expert Saura Naderi. The duel was held in an abandoned steel factory in Japan, without spectators.

The duel was fought according to a points system whereby a goal could be scored by knocking over or disabling the opponent’s robot. Weapons that cannot penetrate the metal were used, because the robots are manned by pilots.

The American team steps into the ring with its Eagle Prime robot. It weighs twelve tons, is almost five meters high and has two seats. The robot is powered by a V8 engine with 430 hp. Weapons consist of a grappling arm and a double-barreled cannon that can fire projectiles such as 1.3kg paintballs at 160km/h. The device costs 2.5 million dollars, according to the makers.

Japan’s Suidobashi Heavy Industry is competing with the Kuratas robot, which it first showed in 2012. That model is four meters high, weighs four tons and has one seat. The Kuratas is equipped with double gatling guns.

In July 2015, the American robot manufacturer MegaBots challenged its Japanese competitor Suidobashi Heavy Industry to a robot duel. The Japanese accepted that invitation. The fight was supposed to take place about a year after the announcement, but it didn’t work out because the venue the organizers had in mind canceled its cooperation.