If you happened to be online last week, you might have seen a viral video of an industrial robot “doing battle” with a Japanese sword master. The video, a thinly-veiled publicity stunt by industrial robotics manufacturer Yaskawa Electric Corporation, amassed more than 4.3 million views since being posted on June 4.
Several blogs gushed at the robot “beating” world-champion iaido (the Japanese martial art concerned with sword handling – not only the cutting, but the sheathing and even the removal of an opponent’s blood from the blade) master Isao Machii.
It’s an industrial robot programmed for precision tasks. What’s so impressive?
Yaskawa is a world leader in industrial robotics, servos, and motion controllers. Its robots have an install base of over 300,000 – completing tasks like welding, assembling, painting, cutting, and sorting in factories around the world. Zeroing in on a tiny target and making a weld or bolting something together requires the same level of precision as slicing through a piece of fruit – even a string bean laying sideways. That’s what it was made to do, and it’s what has made Yaskawa a market leader. This company knows its stuff, and the video was a clever way to spread its name (though unclear how many of the 4-million-plus YouTube viewers will go out and buy one because of it).
Silicon samurai
Critics like myself might also note that it copied Machii’s moves.
The main reason that Yaskawa’s robotic cutting machine maneuvered so smoothly is that it captured the movements of modern-day samurai Machii. Sure, someone could have programmed it to swing at such an angle, but each swipe and slash came from the human master himself.
Machii is a Guinness world-record holder for several sword-related feats, including the most cuts to straw mats in three minutes and the fastest 1,000 iaido cuts. But forget about his Guinness records and watch these videos instead, if you really want to see what a katana-wielding prodigy he is:
Yes, he just cut a 6mm BB in half at 350 km/h. And that wasn’t a fluke, here it is again (and with baseballs moving at 500 km/h):
And once again in English:
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