Together, the two robots moved only three millimeters.

February 3, 2017 10:41 AM

By far the best crappy thing to happen last year was HEBOCON 2016, an annual terrible-robot competition held in Japan in which unskilled amateurs build shitty robots that are bad at fighting. It's wonderful. A bit more from IEEE Spectrum. Previously, the first HEBOCON.
posted by cortex (12 comments total)

I think the words of the winner best sum up this whole thing:

"Forgive me"
posted by RolandOfEld at 10:49 AM on February 3, 2017 [6 favorites]

oh my god that bell one
posted by chococat at 10:57 AM on February 3, 2017 [2 favorites]

Hebocon is the most elegant demonstration we have of the potential of human ingenuity as voluntarily used for the purpose of avoiding the mandatory exertion of ingenuity at the request of an employer or instructor.
posted by ardgedee at 11:02 AM on February 3, 2017 [8 favorites]

1. Uncle flip table
2. Toco toco bot - offers business card with a pizza cutter

I love it!
posted by Secretariat at 11:50 AM on February 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

Shouldn't the Queen of Shitty Robots be involved with this?
posted by cirhosis at 12:05 PM on February 3, 2017 [2 favorites]

cirhosis, I think Simone Giertz would make an excellent celebrity judge but she probably has by all accounts too much of an acquired skillset to qualify as a competitor. These are amateur shitty roboteers; she's gone pro.
posted by cortex at 12:21 PM on February 3, 2017 [4 favorites]

Cortex... totally agree that she'd definitely be suited to be a judge! IThe fact that her machines actually tend to do something does kinda disqualifies her from competing :)
posted by cirhosis at 4:39 PM on February 3, 2017

This was hilarious. I enjoyed the pole dancer more than I should have, and dry ice shooter thing rocked. Lots of falling over is also appreciated.

Maybe I'm overreading, but I thought it was cool that one of the judges (?) said the contest was also about making peace with failure and having the courage to try things you might fail at. It was an unexpected bit of profundity amidst all the silliness.

cool post.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 6:02 PM on February 3, 2017 [3 favorites]

Robo Trumble!
posted by BiggerJ at 4:33 AM on February 4, 2017

Thanks, Cortex, for making me cry with laughter for the first time this year.
posted by snortasprocket at 6:17 AM on February 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

Hebocon had a booth at SF Bay Area Maker Faire last year and hopefully will attend others.
posted by kurumi at 8:40 AM on February 4, 2017

Metafilter: 10 special moves, none of which are effective.
posted by Aznable at 12:57 PM on February 5, 2017