TG meets the fighting MegaBot

There are a few moments in history where science fiction becomes science fact. Take the inventions of the aeroplane and the internet, for example. Both were unthinkable, or at least improbable, right up to the day that the inventors of each walked into their offices and announced: “You know that idea you said would never happen? Well, watch this…”

Standing here in a shabby, heavily graffitied tin warehouse in the cheap end of Oakland, CA, a few miles across the bay from San Francisco, it’s hard not to have the feeling that another of those watershed moments is upon us. It might look just like a supersized science project, but this 15ft tall robot, nicknamed simply Mark 2 as per Iron Man lore, is quite possibly the future of gaming and giant robotics as we know it.

Photography: Barry J Holmes

This feature was originally published in the January 2016 issue of Top Gear magazine.

And the really exciting bit? It’s not built to be a gentle giant, this RoboCop made real has been designed to fight like only a giant metal robot with multiple weapons can – to a fiery, noisy, girder-crunching death against other giant creations in a UFC-meets-monster-trucks-style global series coming to a stadium and screens near you soon.

Well, soonish. Before that can happen, the team of humans behind the MegaBot still has quite a lot of work to do. Like build the real thing – the one you see here is merely a proof of concept – sell it to investors and then get ready for the robotics fight of the decade: USA vs Japan at the tail end of 2016.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Before we get into that robotic rumble in the jungle, let’s find out a little more about the crew behind this thing, where it all started and how anyone could have the crazy idea that this could ever work. I mean, this isn’t something that some hardcore gamers just dreamed up one night after a long session of MechWarriors or Hawken. Or is it?

“It started for us in school playing video games and watching science fiction movies,” says Gui Cavalcanti, CEO and father of the MegaBot. “There’s usually some piloted giant robot. That’s been a meme for the better part of 50 years. So a few years ago I was on a design and build show [The Big Brain Theory] and one of the questions came up – what would you make if you had infinite money and could spend your time just doing engineering projects? My answer was ‘build giant humanoid robots’.”

For most people, that’s where the idea would start and end – a pipe dream that would never, could never, happen. But there are two things about Gui that make him different from most people. The first is that he had spent several years working as an engineer and systems integrator at Boston Dynamics, the company that is currently making the semi-creepy – because they are so lifelike – robots, like Big Dog and Atlas. The company that so interested Google’s X division that they bought it in 2013.

The second is that, unlike inventors of even a decade ago, near-instant finances are available through angel investing and crowdfunding. So the time required for Gui to get enough cash to enlist the help of like-minded gamers and swing for the fences was reduced from years to months. Plus, by this time, Gui had a build partner, Matt Oehrlein. Now the MegaBot CFO, Matt worked for the R&D department at power company Eaton, specialising in control theory and hydraulics. If you think of a robot as a person, Gui builds the skeleton and Matt takes care of the central nervous system.

They met when they both ran Maker Spaces, which are basically gyms for people who like to make stuff – lathes and 3D printers instead of weights and elliptical trainers – and realised they had complementary handiwork skills and similarly ambitious goals. They agreed to stay in touch and collaborate on any big projects that might arise.

So when angel investor Josh Adler appeared in Gui’s space in Boston asking if he had any big projects he could invest in, Gui made the call to Matt, and the pair of them got to work. After a couple of stillborn ideas, the topic turned to robots. ‘What does that business make – can we invest in that?’ asked Adler.

Without missing a beat, Gui and Matt described how they wanted to build a giant robot, make all the components shareable so other teams could make them easily, then create a global sports league where these robots could meet up and smash the crap out of each other for fun. Which was a long-winded way of saying: yes, you can invest in it – there’s not just mayhem but money to be made here, too.

In May 2014, Adler ponied up enough cash to pay for the torso and right arm (that was Mark 1) of the robot you see here. Thinking this would be enough to get people excited enough to invest, the crew launched a $1.8m Kickstarter campaign and sat back to watch the cash roll in. Problem was, it didn’t. “For the first campaign, we were selling the concept of a whole new sport and people just couldn’t get it,” says Gui. It was just too much for people to imagine at once. A little too ambitious.

But it did get the attention of CAD design software bosses at Autodesk. As the first bits had been designed using its software, the company offered to sponsor the build of the rest of the robot, if it could use it at its keynote speech at Maker Faire – the annual geekfest for makers and inventors – in Las Vegas. This is where they met Brinkley Warren, the third member of the team, a serial entrepreneur who specialises in building and selling new ideas and concepts.

Mark 2 was an instant hit and generated loads of attention, but that wasn’t enough for the MegaBot team. They still wanted to start their fighting formula.

So, instead of building another MegaBot to scrap with, they picked an argument with one in Japan: Suidobashi Heavy Industry’s Kuratas giant robot. They issued the challenge in a video posted on YouTube on the 4th of July (naturally). And the Kuratas team replied, also in video form: Yeah, bring it on. But they also made one caveat – it had to be hand-to-hand combat, not just big guns.

The big fight next year promises to be quite the event. To build a punching, grappling robot, MegaBot launched another Kickstarter to raise $500k. The guys got their money from the 7,857 micro-investors and are now slaving away on making Mark 3 happen. As the campaign states: “It’s going to be at least five times faster, five times more powerful and fully equipped for melee and arranged combat.”

Who is going to win? “I think the Japanese are the crowd favourite,” says Matt. But he also seems quietly confident that their bot will kick the bolts out of the Japanese one. While that remains to be seen, I know one fact for sure – we’ll be there reporting from the ringside. This is one moment in history we don’t want to miss.