When you announce you’ve built a giant human-piloted robot and then go and challenge Japan to a fight their giant fighting robot, you gotta' give the people what they want leading up to the battle: information. Any information will do.
What you don't want do in an oversaturated media environment, where everything from baby sloths to space exploration competes for attention, is to shout out possibly the best idea ever (if you're a hopeless manchild who grew up in the '80s) and then go radio silent.
But that’s what the Oakland-based startup MegaBots, Inc. did, stirring up skepticism, especially among the 7,857 Kickstarter backers who chipped in more than $500,000 to upgrade the 16-ft tall, 10-ton, 350-HP mech suit, after igniting a global frenzy for metal-on-metal violence last summer.
They first whetted our collective appetite for robot destruction with a video last June challenging Kuratas, an anime inspired robot completed in 2012.
Suidobashi Heavy Industries, the roboticists behind the 13-ft tall, 5-ton Autobot-looking construct, gleefully accepted.
“You grew up hoping that the giant battles of science fiction would become real, and we did too,” said MegaBots founder Matt Oehrlein in a Kickstarter video posted Aug. 18, 2015. “That dream is one year away.”
New Equipment Digest is an IndustryWeek companion site within Penton's Manufacturing & Supply Chain Group.
