First human vs robot cage fight goes viral, but who actually won?

It looks like something straight out of a Terminator movie.

A man walks into a MMA cage and standing in front of him is a six foot humanoid robot ready to fight.

And then they actually start throwing punches.

American content creator Frankie LaPenna, who is from Grand Rapids, Michigan, faced the humanoid robot at an event organised by Robot Entertainment Kombat, or REK, in San Francisco. The fight took place last week and the footage has since gone viral online.

REK described it as the first “Human VS Terminator robot fight”, although that remains the organiser’s claim rather than an independently verified record.

The footage is quite something.

LaPenna starts by throwing several punches at the machine. The robot takes them before fighting back with punches and some powerful kicks.

One of those kicks sends LaPenna flying backwards across the cage.

But there is one important detail.

This was not an AI robot deciding on its own when to punch or kick.

A human pilot was remotely controlling the robot.

REK normally stages fights between humanoid robots controlled by human pilots using VR or gamepad controls. The robots use AI to help with things such as balance, but the fighting decisions come from the person controlling them.

So technically, LaPenna was fighting another human. The difference was that the other person had a six foot robot doing the fighting for them.

There is also some confusion over who actually won.

REK later said LaPenna kept fighting and eventually defeated the robot. However, other reports say the fight was stopped after LaPenna was knocked down, and the complete footage needed to establish exactly how the contest ended has not been released publicly.

What we can say is that watching a six foot humanoid robot kick a human across a cage makes those old Terminator films suddenly feel a little less like science fiction. And it's scary too.