Japanese Robotic Sumo Wrestling Is Completely Autonomous

If you have ever seen the show "Battlebots" that airs in the US, you know that most of the robots used are set on destroying the competition literally rather than simply pushing them out of the ring. Robot Wars here in the US is also a competition that is as much about the humans who are controlling the robots via remotes as it is about the capabilities of the robots themselves. Japan has a robot sumo wrestling competition that is very different from what we see here in the US.

In the Japan, the robots used in the sumo competition are autonomous. The handlers of the bots have remote start buttons and can stop the bots when the judge commands it. The judges take leg safety very seriously and have what appears to be the sort of hard shell padding on tier lower legs that a catcher would use in baseball.

Some of the bots in the robot sumo video below are very fast and some of them are very slow and powerful. The fast bots move seriously fast around the small circle and on occasion some of the autonomous bots are unable to tell where the end of the circle is and fall off themselves. It appears that the slower and more powerful bots that use suction of some sort to stick to the circle surface are the ideal sort.

The fast bots are unable to move them off the circle whilst the slow and lumbering bot easily pushes some of the smaller, faster bots out of the circle. The bots each have a different sort of weaponry and the video is certainly entertaining if you have a few minutes to watch. The final match turns out to be speed vs. power and the two bots are very closely matched.

SOURCE: The Awesomer