At some point you’ve played Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Robots and thought “that would be cool to try out with real live robots.” Well dreams do come true. Syfy is bringing the Robot Combat League to our respective TV sets. The show will be hosted by former WWE superstar and Fozzy front man Chris Jericho and it will be on it’s way in the new year.
The creation of reality TV producer Craig Plestis and robotics expert Mark Setrakian, this unique show pits teams of two — one engineer and one "robo jockey" — with one of twelve custom made robots in an elimination style tournament for $100,000. If your bot is damaged during one of the boxing/MMA ruled fights you’re given 20 minutes to fix it, but if your box suffers a critical failure or your 20 minutes expire you’re out of the tournament and Hugh Jackman’s kid gets taken by his evil aunt Debra and uncle Marvin… or something. Check out more after the jump.
With each bot custom made by Setrakian, they’ll each have their own interesting strengths and weaknesses, but it’s the controllers that we’re going to have to keep an eye on. According to Entertainment Weekly, who first broke the story, some of the robo jockeys are soldiers and athletes, but one notable name is MMA fighter Amanda Lucas, daughter of famed Star Wars creator George Lucas. There’s no information on any of the engineers, but we will be absolutely shocked if Grant Imahara or any other Mythbuster is nowhere to be seen around the giant fabricated ass kickers.
One drawback though, is that each robot combatant having a full range of motion. Instead each bot will be held in place by a stabilizing bar that prevents the top-heavy machines from toppling over during fights and will help controls their movement across the ring.
That hasn’t stopped Syfy president Mark Stern from gushing with joy from what he’s seen.
"Setrakian created a robotics system that can mimic a human's actions and movements. We’ve had robots decapitated, we’ve had robots cut in half. It was truly spectacular."
Now it should be noted that Mark Burnett and James Cameron have a similar show in the works over at Discovery called Robogeddon, but their work is only in the concept stages right now. Robot Combat League however has already finished shooting and is already making plans for a second season with better robots and no bars, so hopefully we’ll see some bigger fights when season two hits.
Here are a few sneak peak images from the show:
Special thanks to Entertainment Weekly.
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