BrainBank: Rock 'em Sock 'em Edition

The video's kind of lame, but the concept is awesome: electronic Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots. I'm sure you're all old enough to remember the Rock 'em Sock 'em toys, but if not, allow me to elucidate. Basically, each player controls a plastic robot and mashes some sort of button to try to punch out the other robot.

In this revamp of the classic, built for Texas Instruments' Co-op Design Challenge, these enterprising individuals use accelerometer-equipped watches to control the robots. Basically, leaning their arms forward moves the robots forward, while a punch (occasionally) causes the robot to jab. It's pretty clunky in execution, but I like the concept.

We just need to do this with actual gigantic robots, and we'll have the makings of every Giant Robot Anime to ever come out of Japan.