South Korean Baseball Team Gets Robot Fans to Cheer it Up

A South Korean baseball team fallen on bad times has found a novel way to lift their failing gaming fortune-getting a crowd of robots fans to cheer them up.

The Hanwha Eagles baseball team, which has lost 400 times in the last five years and consistently come last in their league, wants the robots to pump up the levels at the stadiums where their fan base runs obviously low. 

All Hanwha Eagles team supporters not inclined to come to the stadium can  control the robots or "fanbots" as they are called, over the internet. They can cheer, shout and even perform the Mexican wave, reports the BBC. Fans can even upload their faces on to the robots.

"The signs out there out in the outfield, it's a pretty neat idea. It gets the crowd into it and really helps them get involved," pitcher Andrew Albers said in a video showing off the robots., reports the ABC News.

The fans of the team are nicknamed Buddhist Saints, because of the consistency of their team's losses but the less charitable term used to describe them is "Hanwha chickens."

But there are some die-hard game fanatics who opine that robots can never replace the dynamism of a live fan base. The din, the shouting, the stadium atmosphere and interaction can never be replicated.

Earlier, Japan planned to recreate live matches using holographic technology. The plan has been shelved as Japan got overlooked in favor of Qatar for the 2022 World Cup Football.

Although, Japanese Prime Minister recently told reporters that he would like robots to compete at the 2020 Olympics. "In 2020, I would like to gather all of the world's robots and aim to hold an Olympics where they compete in technical skills," according to a Fox news report.