Friday, January 20, 2017
MegaBots
Uncrate: Star Wars walkers, RoboTech, Metal Gear, MechWarrior — giant combat robots have been the stuff of film and video game dreams for decades. Now MegaBots is turning that dream into reality. Tested visits the MegaBots headquarters to see how the latest version of their giant fighting robot is coming along, and how the team plans to provide the platform for an entire league of combat robots.
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4 comments:
There are a lot of interesting things coming from this video. The first is coming from the end of the video where they discuss the speed at which this all came together. They mentioned earlier how the knives were not hard to make as they were later cut in 30 minutes, but they were able to put together that entire project in less than a week for it to run completely smoothly for the filming with all of the other projects they must have been working on. In addition, it is interesting how they are able to use other industry’s materials in order to construct their robots. This process sounds very theatre-esque. Finally, it is really cool how much they recognize their fans and really gain joy in their interaction and desire to be a part of the creative process of these beings as the two groups have identical sources of inspiration.
It’s pretty refreshing to see Simone Giertz when she is not creating her “serious-but-not-serious” robot videos. She has a very happy-go-lucky personality when she is not trying to show off her well-enjoyed, overly-simplified household robots. I’m confused as to what the point of this video is, though – MegaBots talked a lot about wanting to turn kids’ dreams into a reality, but they decided to do this by increasing the size of a carrot-cutting robot. When I think of a fighting robot, I imagine boxing gloves and random other Big Hero 6 robot weapons, not giant, vertically-cutting knives. I suppose they are fulfilling Simone’s dream by creating this giant robot, though it is a dream she claims that she didn’t even know she had. They also barely show any clips of the robot chopping things, which was disappointing for me. It was a cool idea, and a great contraption, but I’m just unsure as to the purpose of the entire video/MegaBot.
Man, ok, this was really cool! Personally this seems like one of the greatest professions ever. But aside from the fact that these people get to make giant robots all day, I thought it was really cool to hear about what went into the days leading up to the filming of this piece. I really liked that the megabots workers used premade tools from other industries as the weapons for their robots rather than trying to figure out how to build something comparable on their own. It reminded me of how different theater companies will borrow from other nearby companies during a production. Overall I think that it was really great that they drew inspiration from their fans, and understood just how excited they were because this is a pretty incredible field of work. While I don’t think this will really influence anyone towards theater, it is still an important lesson on following your dreams even if they seem larger than life.
Oh my god, Megabots. He who does not genuinely enjoy the idea of giant robot mech warriors battling it out, ripping terrain to shreds and smashing their opponents to piles of smoking scrap is genuinely in need of a little more excitement in their life. The scale of the megabots project, as well as their Japanese counterpart Sudoibashi Heavy industries is truly breathtaking, if only from a engineering and manufacturing standpoint. I already enjoy manufacturing with metal almost as much as I do carpentry (which is pretty good considering how much custom hardware is going into Ragtime. Guess who's punching all those holes.) Not only do I have in awe the sheer amount of directed hydraulic power present in that machine, I also have admiration for the engineering and design of these robots. Trying to understand how these things work is why I am pursuing the engineering studies minor, and why I want to focus on learning more about stage automation, so that I can replicate just a small fraction of the control engineering present in the megabots project.
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