Fighting robots - "Real Steel" to be a reality soon
Real Steel, starring Hugh Jackman and a cast of boxing bots, released in 2011 and made headlines all over. The headlines were not because of the movie collections but because of the Robots boxing in the flick. These were advanced robots capable of boxing like humans in a more gruesome and barbaric manner, performing extreme boxing moves unparallel to humans. But the big question was and still is, can this be a reality?
Enwitra RoboSports is a startup from the Silicon Valley of India, Bengaluru, which says it can and is. The founder of the company, whose aim is to build the first Indian Global Sports Entertainment company, says that we shall see something very similar hopefully by 2020. And he did not say this out of the air but supported it with facts.
There have been shows like BattleBots, RoboWars, Game of Drones in the USA and UK which have showcased battling bots before. Such events are very popular in their respective regions and garner good TV viewership as well. In India, perhaps the ones that come closest to this are the events on robots which take place in various tech festivals across the country each year.
He goes on to tell us the hero of the movie Real Steel, ‘Atom,’ had a “shadow function” which allowed it to mimic its human master, Hugh Jackman. As of today, this shadow function is at an advanced stage and is being used in sports as well. To begin with, Anton Bogdanovych from the University of Technology, Sydney has developed a suit that lets you control a robot in real-time using full body motion capture.
Drew Bagnell, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, said during an interview that researchers are currently studying robotic balance and fluid movement. He added, "For a boxing robot, you'd need some level of autonomy—a person couldn't control every joint at once.” Though sparring robots may seem far-fetched now, "10 years is a long time," Bagnell says, adding, "Nothing in the film seems wildly unreasonable."
Time has flown since that interview and now there are shadow function controlled 7 to 8 ft tall robots battling in an arena. The difference from the movie is that the robots are tied to a controller cum power source and the humans control them using exosuit like harness and joysticks. The web is now full of videos of humanoids and quadruples (4-legged) which can jog, hop, run and balance with precision and speed. Technology is really moving fast!
Enwitra RoboSports, aims at adding a new flavour to all this by inducing new and exciting games every year. The inaugural edition will possibly have two games, WipeOut and RoboQuidditch, both of which are adaptations of popular movie sports. The founder adds that this is a global platform for the techies and the so-called ‘Nerds’ to become ‘Super Stars’. The inaugural league is set to stage participants from across Asia and other parts of the world.