Like any true digital native, I often lose sleep at night pondering the possibilities of a playful robot battle between indisputable champions in the fieldJapan and my blowhard homeland America. As of Monday morning, such a battle seems to be very close to becoming a reality. Likely high on the fumes of patriotism surrounding the Fourth of July weekend, American robotics company MegaBots issued a formal challenge to Japan's Suidobashi Heavy Industries centered on a proper robot duel:
Thankfully, Suidobashi’s CEO and founder Kogoro Kurata wasted no time issuing a brilliant response (see above). Thoroughly underwhelmed by MegaBots' purpoted advancements in the field of robotics, Kurata requested an escalation of the battle boundaries. "You know what we really need [is] melee combat," posits Kurata. "If we’re gonna win this, I want to punch them to scrap and knock them down to do it."
Though Suidobashi is easily the most bankable bet for the eventual duel, MegaBots co-founder Gui Cavalcanti seems far from deterred by Kurata's ante-upping response. In fact, Cavalcanti issued a statement to Quartz confirming the duel:
"The fight is on. We have to work out the ground rules, and figure out how to not die, but the fight is on. We’ll be releasing more information soon as we work through some of the logistics."
Team Japan!
