“A human defeated two of the three robots he faced in a cage fight recently held in San Francisco,” reports the Los Angeles Times, noting that videos of the event drew more than 10 million views on YouTube.
But “the humans behind that fight could face a battle of their own — the legal type — if they want to hold another event like ‘Human Vs. Robot,’ the Sept. 18 competition that placed influencer Frankie LaPenna inside an octagon to battle three humanoid robots that were controlled remotely by a human operator in separate MMA-style fights…”
NM
Thoughts:
- There’s a very WWE-ish feel to the production and the narrative here. I’m gonna guess that this was more or less kayfabed and the robots’ operators aren’t actually trying to win.
- They call it MMA-style, but “Frankie” is definitely not in regulation gear, and as Moe Szyslak said about the spikes on his gloves, “They, uh, don’t let you use that no more”.
- There’s definitely an uncanny valley aspect to the way the robot moves, but they seem to be getting better at staying balanced while moving and its strikes look like they could really hurt if there was some weight to it.
- OK, the T-800 kicking Frankie’s shoulder so hard that it knocked itself ass-over-teakettle and tore its own head off like the suicidal prototype in Robocop 2 was hilarious.
- The robot missed with its uppercut in round 2, but it looked impressive nonetheless. There’s no way that kick legitimately threw Frankie across the octagon without breaking half his bones, though. You can see in the replay that it’s got some weight to it, but he’s still overselling.
- The attempted roundhouse kicks missed their mark but that’s an impressive range of movement.
- You can’t make a robot tap out because it doesn’t feel pain, and it doesn’t have bones to break if you dominate it to where the ref stops the fight, so I guess “knocking out” a robot in this type of fight is… just shoving them so they lose their balance, I guess? Balance is still the main thing standing in the way of functional androids, so really these fights can end whenever the human decides to win.
- This one’s called “the Predator”, but it looks more like a Geth with dreadlocks to me.
- This one seems to have worse aim but better balance. It manages to recover from some near falls more than once.
- OK, I guess you can also beat a robot by body-slamming it. Probably not an easy move.
- They’re not showing us how long these fights actually took, so there’s no showing of how time has passed (except that it got dark in the meantime). Seems like the robot didn’t really beat him so much as he surrendered after getting worn to exhaustion against machines that don’t get tired.
- I’m not sure that quick clip of the first match should count as a win. Seems more like a draw if they’re both down.
Amusing little concept, but I think the war between man and machine isn’t gonna become primetime entertainment just yet.