ROBO-ONE Robot Profile: Metallic Fighter - next generation (Video)

Metallic Fighter, created by Eiichiro Morinaga, is one of the top ROBO-ONE robots, and one of the two selected to be featured in the "ROBO-ONE In The Space" promotional video. The current Metallic Fighter design is soon to be retired and replaced by a similar but much more advanced design. Last Thursday evening we were able to take a close look the New Metallic Fighter robot before it sees action in the ROBO-ONE combat ring.

 

Morinaga-san is a top competitor in a number of different Robo-Sports including Robot Sumo, Micromouse, ROBO-ONE, and probably some others that we're not aware of. People involved in ROBO-ONE here in Japan often refer to him as "Father of ROBO-ONE".

He's one of those rare individuals that have highly developed skills across multiple disciplines. Not only is he excellent at mechanical design, he also develops the world class software that controls his robots. At the same time, his strategy and competitiveness in competitions is really a pleasure to watch.

 
  Metallic Fighter (left) featured in battle with
  Dynamizer for the ROBO-ONE In The Space
  promotional video.

 The current Metallic Fighter design
 has captured many ROBO-ONE
 titles and is always a crowd favorite.
 Now it's soon to be retired as Morinaga's
 latest design takes over. 

 The New Metallic Fighter design is bigger, taller,
 stronger, faster, and more flexible. Morinaga-san
 has retained a lot of the basic design elements
 including the robot's bicycle lamp style head. 

 Designed based on the new KONDO servos,
 Metallic Fighter is able to twist it's body almost
 like a dancer or kung fu expert.

Like almost all ROBO-ONE class robots, Morinaga-san sets up a robot pose using his control software. He clicks on the servo control status to unlock the servos he wants to change, then manually repositions them the way he wants them. The servo status is then captured and the parameters for the new pose are recorded so they can be added to a scenario or mapped to a button combination on the R/C unitl.

This makes it extremely fast and easy to modify poses and movements on the fly. For example, just minutes before Metal Fighter was scheduled to go into the ring against R-Blue, Morinaga-san was busy changing poses and moves.

 

 
 Two Metallic Fighter generations side by side. The new generation
 is so powerful that if it happened to kick you in the leg, we're sure
 it would leave a bruise or two.

 Everyone always wants to see what Morinaga-san has come up
 with, and to learn as much as possible from him. Thankfully,
 he welcomes the role of sensei (teacher). He's always very open
 and helpful, even with novice robot builders.

 

Related links:

Morinaga-san's Website (Japanese)

RT Corporation Robot training and accessories (English and Japanese)

 

Comments

[murcii]

Wow, they are big, they didn´t look that big on vidos and photos.