Texas Instruments Competition Yields Remote Rock'Em Sock'Em Robots

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If you remember the disastrous period in video game history that was Nintendo’s Virtual Boy, then you’ll likely also remember one of the handful of games it produced: Teleroboxer. Thanks to a recent contest sponsored by Texas Instruments, Teleroboxer is no long a lousy red-tinted game almost no one played, but a reality whose time has come.

Zachery Shivers and Anne Flinchbaugh, working on an entry for the Texas Instruments Co-op Design Challenge, took a couple of Texas Instruments Chronos wireless watches with accelerometers, tricked out a Rock’em Sock’em Robots board with some servos and a controller board, and thus allowed their own punches to correspond to the punches of the robots in the game.

And just in case you’re wondering, no, knocking the other robot’s block off, the object in the game, did NOT result in spontaneous decapitation. No doubt every gadget geek in the world is wondering how to do this, so be of good cheer, because the plans are publicly available. At least for now.