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You might wince at the professional spectacle of two humans beating each other to a pulp. But when it’s two robots? We want maximum carnage.
Thankfully, the inaugural Ultimate Robot Knock-out Legend (URKL) competition in Shenzhen, China, has delivered on providing the most brutal-but-bloodless spectacle you can lay eyes on.
In a video of a cage match between two mechanical humanoids, one of the clanker combatants literally knocks its opponent’s block off by delivering a flying kick to the face.
The robot continues to fight with its head dangling from between its shoulders and throws a few punches, but not for long.
After being knocked to the ground again, it flails uncontrollably while trying to get to its feet. The violent jerking severs the cable connecting the hanging head, and the robot collapses onto the ground. The other robot, victorious, dances over its unmoving body.
According to the state-run tabloid Global Times, the URKL competition featured 32 teams from around the world who all used the T800 humanoid robot from EngineAI, a Chinese robotics company.
The point of the competition, according to EngineAI CEO Zhao Tongyang, was twofold: create a global commercial robot fighting brand and promote research and industrialization.
“Let the event feed back into technology, and let technology drive the industry,” Tongyang told Global Times.
You can’t accuse Tongyang of not putting his money where his mouth is. In a video that went viral last December, he donned a suit of armor and let himself take blows from one of his T800 robots. One kick was so powerful that it slammed him to the ground.
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