Giant robot battles are emerging as a competitive sport. Giant fighting robots
have been a dream for a whole generation of people really. Our goal was robot
combat from the very beginning. We built Iron Glory to fight a long range and
stuck big guns on it.
Suidobashi. We have a giant robot, you have a giant robot, you know it needs to
happen. We challenge you to a duel.
My name is Jim Connor, Welcome to Game Changers Silicon Valley
In this segment we'll discuss the next frontier and robotics that integrates
technology and competive sport with entertainment my guest is Matt Ohrlein,
co-founder of Megabots, the company which created the giant robot battle
known as: Japan versus the USA. Matt, welcome to this show. Let's start with a
question: how did you come up with this idea of creating a battle between giant
fighting robots? Sure it's pretty crazy to think about right! This this idea was
actually born out of me and my co-founders childhoods of playing video
games and reading comic books and watching movies that feature these epic
robot battles from from science fiction. We both went to engineering school
and we realized at some point like we can actually build these robots. So I
credit my co-founder with probably being the first person to say we should build
giant fighting robots and he gave me a call and I was like we really should do
that, and then we sort of came up with the idea of creating a sports league
together. Okay so how long did it take to do the first robot? Yeah, the
first robot which we have named Iron Glory is a $200,000 robot it took us
about a year and a half to fully complete you know but we were doing
other things like media licensing and fundraising and that kind of stuff. If it
was just us engineering probably five to six months. How much how much engineering
IP did you have to create or was it all off the shelf. We try to keep the robots
as off-the-shelf as possible because one of our goals is if these things are
going to compete in stadium size battles you have to be able to send them into
the pits just like Formula one cars just like NASCAR is to get repaired quickly
and so having a lot of off-the-shelf parts gives you a huge advantage there.
Okay, so now you've got a robot built did you build a second one next or did you
do some of media events? Yeah, we did a few media events with the old robot but
really once we issued this big challenge to Japan that we can maybe talk about
later, we built an entirely new robot that is fully combat capable that is an
order of magnitude more complex and powerful. That is, if I may use the word, a
very awesome robot! From day one what this going to be a battle
of the giant robots that correct? That's right, from day one, we wanted this to be
a sports league you know and the vision, it's really easy to picture right.
You go to a stadium there's ten robots you know there's 60,000 people there
they're cheering on these robots are covered in sponsor logos there's a pit
crew there's drivers and it's just this like huge high energy event where you
watch these robots battle. It's a franchise model then? Yeah, so we would
like to move to that eventually right now it's mostly megabots owned robots
there is, you know our headliner fight, our first headliner fight was another
team in Japan and we're sort of looking for other teams to join but we're also
prepared to just build all the robots ourselves. So build them yourself for now
domestically and have domestic battles regional competition to maybe perhaps
national and then maybe something international. Yeah there's also a
few people, a few teams in China now that are building some robots you
may see another challenge in the future where we battle them. Ok, so I want to
kind of back up for a minute and ask you this question. Your robots are all human
driven, is there a game plan where you have remote-controlled robots or will
you stay with a human driven human operator model? Yeah, so this is something
we have thought a lot about and there's really good arguments for kind of both
sides right. If you have if you take the people out of the robots, you can
obviously completely destroy the robot without dangering somebody inside the
robot; but on the other hand it's just not as cool to not have somebody inside
the robot right. What's cooler, being a fighter pilot or being a drone
pilot? You know, kids grow up and they want to be fighter pilots not drone
pilots so I think there is something you know when people go to watch sports they
go to watch people you know they go to watch a race they're thinking about is
it is it hard to drive that car, you know, are they nervous are
they under a lot of pressure, are they gonna get hurt, and so bringing that kind
of element of danger gives us a huge entertainment advantage. So NASCAR's very
popular. Yeah. and people get killed in NASCAR races periodically. Is that
something you have to worry about it this time?
It's definitely something we are always concerned about safety, it's a huge
concern for us and really any company regardless of your fighting
robots or not. When you're building hardware especially hydraulics
I mean you just have a ton of power moving through these
hoses. Our new robot is a 430 horsepower, 15 ton you know piece of iron and
hydraulics so it is very dangerous to be around. It's caught fire a few times the
pilots wear flame retardant suits helmets five-point harness they're
surrounded by a roll cage so we use as many safety standards as we
can to make them as safe as possible, but you know on the other hand there
there does have to be a little bit of an element of danger there to make it
exciting. So you somehow invented this idea of Japan vs. USA. Yeah. and you
spent quite a bit of money shipping by freight your two robots to Japan
and then we got them up and running and had this battle basically and in the end,
your team won, you and your co-founder won. Yeah. How did that come about
did you engineer this idea did someone plant the seed or give us a little
insight to that. Yes so really this was just a case of trying to bootstrap the
company. Honestly, we had built at that time in the company we had built
one robot Iron Glory, back then we called it Mark II, but we later renamed the
robots. We had built iron glory and we didn't have enough money to build
another robot. So we sat there thinking how do we start a sports league if we
only have one robot? But there was one other giant robot in the world that we
knew of and it was in Japan and so we thought well 4th of July is just around
the corner, let's dress up Super Americana
we're wearing American flag capes and aviators and we issued a challenge to
that Japanese team they answered one week later and the whole internet blew
up and that's kind of what put us on the map as a as a worldwide event worldwide
brand and a sports league. Ok so you got the two robots despite the battle
fatigue and the damage you've got them back home and you've got them up and
running now. Iron Glory is that going to get retired and replaced by a new one or
is that be the trophy moniker or what? You know
Iron Glory is kind of this old workhorse that just like it just
keeps going you know that robots been beaten up and tipped over so many times
and it just keeps running so I think at the very least we'll probably keep it
around as a punching bag or some kind of weapons testing robot. But you know it's
as long as as long as we're finding good use for it and maybe bringing it around
to appearances we'll keep it around. Is there a connection to the
the sponsorship, let me ask you that, is that from a certain like a NASCAR
type of engines or is it more of an engineering company or hydraulic pump
company any any connections there? Yes so, it's really interesting. We have
this opportunity because we are this technology platform we have a great
opportunity to get technology sponsors involved in a sports league so in the
case of some you know some of our big sponsors, Autodesk, they make engineering
software Parker Hannifin makes hydraulic components, they have this opportunity to
showcase their product in something that's really really cool and gets
millions of views and they can showcase it as: "Our product enables the giant
fighting robots of science fiction to be created", and that's a really powerful message
that tech companies don't always have access to.
Is it Autodesk, they were an early investor? Right absolutely. That's
pretty unusual that a corporate would come in that early. What was that magic
all about? Yeah, so you know I think it was, in one of our first big appearances
we went to a Maker Faire with Iron Glory that was kind of the unveiling with
Autodesk and we showcase you know building this epic thing using Autodesk
software and you know we released some videos about it and Autodesk got a ton
of brand exposure I mean their logo was was all over and you know they they're
in a youtube video with millions and millions of views and thousands of press
articles were written about how Autodesk is you know enabling the giant robots of
science fiction to become created. And so, they saw that tremendous value and it
makes a lot of sense for these companies to invest in us and further that
relationship. Is there any educational connection, this happens to be one of my favorite
passions is their connection of a student sees it whether the university or high
school, they go that's cool I'd like to understand how those robots work? Yeah
absolutely, you know one of one of our you know big internal missions is to
inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers to
learn science and math and create amazing things. So you know we don't have
any active partnerships with universities or schools, sometimes
we'll do tours for schools but I think one of the important things is if you
really want to inspire kids you can't force it down their throats you have to
be cool on platforms that they find relevant and they
have to be drawn towards you. Right, so if it's a teacher or a parent saying "hey
you know you should watch megabots" that's not cool for a kid and
that's not going to inspire them so they kind of discover us and
they realize: giant fighting robots are cool I want to be that. So I have to ask
you this question: Where did a scrappy entrepreneur like you find the cool
factor? Is this a total natural thing? Boy I am not so sure on
that one. It definitely feels like it comes natural to me, you know my
only film experience i I took a film class in high school kind of for fun and
realized I really liked the medium and I would kind of edit videos together as a
hobby of just kind of like build the cool things that I've built. But
it's something that I kind of discovered within myself that like I really
actually enjoy quite a bit of the video production in the media production side
of this entertainment company that I had started and it's been it's actually kind
of strange how I thought when I started Megabots
I thought: "Oh you know we're starting a robotics company", but the reality is we
started an entertainment company and as I got more involved in the entertainment
aspect of it it was like this is actually really cool. If I was to ask you
what we might see in the next 12 to 24 months from the company what might that
be? Yeah, so looking forward we are we are
looking at pushing that vision forward of the epic sports league the epic
robotic sports league so we'll be building out kind of what what does it
look like to go on the road with these things what are the logistics involved
and we'll be fundraising another round to put that all together, build out those
robots, perhaps recruit those teams, getting the rules in place and
building out the logistics for a worldwide sports league. That is
absolutely impressive and fun. So Matt, I want to thank you for coming by.
What's the best way if a person watching show would like to contact you or the company?
Sure, they can go to our website and there's a contact link right in the
upper right-hand corner I think. Otherwise, they can just email
inquiry@megabots.com. I really enjoyed it, thank you so much and I wish you every success
going forward. Yeah, thanks a lot, Jim.
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