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Robotics Software Science Technology

Avatar-Style Manned Robot Takes First Steps In South Korea (valuewalk.com) 42

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ValueWalk: A robot designed by a veteran of science fiction blockbusters which bear a striking resemblance to the military robots seen in the movie Avatar has taken its first baby steps. The robot standing in a room on the outskirts of Seoul, South Korea stands four meters (13 feet) tall and weighs 1.5 tons. In a Facebook post, designer Vitaly Bulgarov said, "Everything we have been learning so far on this robot can be applied to solve real-world problems." His previous work experience includes work on film series such as Transformers, Terminator and Robocop, reports phys.org. Its creators at the Hankook Mirae Technology, a robotics company in South Korea, claim it is the world's first. About 30 engineers there worked hard conducting initial tests Tuesday afternoon, notes phys.org. For the engineers, it was a challenge to build the giant robot because the unprecedented scale meant they had nothing to refer to. Company chairman Yang Jin-Ho said, "Our robot is the world's first manned bipedal robot and is built to work in extreme hazardous areas where humans cannot go (unprotected)." A pilot sitting inside the robot's torso made some limb movements, and the robot, Method-2, mimicked them with his metal arms, each weighing 130 kilograms (286 pounds). It is so huge that it is twice the size of a tall man, and when it takes a step, the ground shakes with a loud whirring of motors. Method-2 has grabbed the media's attention due to its enormous size, but its creators say that the core achievement of the project is the technology they developed. How the robot will be used is unclear so far, but it is seen more as a test-bed for various technologies that will make it possible for the creators to build robots of any type and size in the future, notes phys.org.
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Avatar-Style Manned Robot Takes First Steps In South Korea

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  • Avatar? Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @08:05PM (#53563375)

    Try Battletech. Aliens. Titanfall. Starship Troopers (the book).

    • Hard to see, but maybe the battle exosuits the humans fought the Navi with?

      Anyway, your jobs on danger, cause "Robots".....

      • by AJWM ( 19027 )

        Yeah, those. Of which original poster cites several examples of prior art.

        I also recall a fictional article in Galaxy SF magazine back in the 1968, "The Warbots", written and illustrated by Larry Todd.

        Here are some of the pix: https://2warpstoneptune.com/20... [2warpstoneptune.com]

        • by Chrontius ( 654879 ) on Wednesday December 28, 2016 @05:51AM (#53564887)
          As the designer notes in an earlier interview, earlier models had wider hips and a different torso shape, with a more bio-inspired, "automotive" design. Range of motion questions, as well as seasickness caused by the robot's swaying gait, caused them to remodel the joints until the machine's proportions bear an uncanny resemblance to Cameron's AMP suits. The designer of the real one praises Cameron and his team's vision and engineering acumen. While it wasn't designed by looking at Avatar's mecha, it represents a case where there was some convergent evolution during the design process.
  • by youn ( 1516637 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @08:09PM (#53563391) Homepage

    I am not sure what I'd do with one but I want one :p

  • This is great. It's not like South Korea has some kind of nut job for a northern neighbor who is going to feel even more diminutive now and be likely to nuke them for just having this.
    • Ypu can disregard all the propaganda; the problem isnt NK's primitive, low-yield "fission pops." It's al their goddamn conventional artillery pieces which they've got pointed at Seoul.
      • 1. It is very unlikely that NK has the gunpowder to fire those artillery, as gunpowder becomes useless due to humidity after a time, and it has been a long time since the war.
        2. They know if they use those artillery, they will be instantly crushed by the US and China.

    • North Korea's leaders have nothing to gain by nuking anyone. If they did, they would be immediately invaded (probably by China, and US), and the leadership killed or imprisoned. It's the threat of nuking people that causes us to pay them off so they'll stop making people nervous.
  • Who would win three way fight be between MegaBots Inc's Mk. III, Suidobashi Heavy Industry's KURATAS and this.

    • If we can get Honda or Toyota to field a robot - Toyota's iWalk springs to mind as a platform - we would have enough entrants for a straight-up double-elimination tournament. Hell, if they're not too beat-to-hell after two fights, everyone fights everyone and we see which matchups go which ways.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • robots started walking since the late 1950's, and hows that working out for us, now some jackass makes a knock off from a movie that was a knock off of battletech that takes a step while being held in a harness

    clap clap, do something useful!

  • YAPWRMU

    The poster put 1.5 ton (where "ton" aka 1000kg, or 1Mg if you wanna be a core SI nerd ) from the original article but dumped the 4m heigth to replace it with 13 feet.

    WFT

    C'm'on, if you realy want to use units that myanmar, liberia and US only still use as legal : do it. But please do not mix them without clarifying which unit you are refering to.

    As a reminder "ton" is a coloquial term for lots of things :
    - 1,016 kg if in UK and using old mesurements
    - 907kg if in US (and to some extend as a legacy in C

  • Without the uber power supply, this is nothing more than a marketing stunt.

    • Hey, the evas in Evangelion seemed to do pretty well with 5-min batteries and huge power cables the rest of the time...

  • Wouldn't it make more sense to make a human sized (or smaller) robot that can walk first, and then scale it up? If human size robots can't reliably stay balanced, why the fuck would I want to crawl inside one that's as big as a school bus?

Swap read error. You lose your mind.

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