Avatar-Style Manned Robot Takes First Steps In South Korea

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.

Avatar? Seriously?

[Lisandro]

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

Re: Avatar? Seriously?

[Matt.Battey]

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

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

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[AJWM]

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]

Re: Avatar? Seriously?

[Chrontius]

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.

I for one welcome our robotic overlords

[youn]

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

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[mdm-adph]

Oh, I'm pretty sure of what I'd do with one.

That's nice

[frovingslosh]

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.

Re: That's nice

[Type44Q]

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.

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[Coren22]

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.

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[Sperbels]

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.

Robot Fighting

[Dr.Altaica]

Who would win three way fight be between MegaBots Inc's Mk. III, Suidobashi Heavy Industry's KURATAS and this.

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[Chrontius]

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.

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[turkeydance]

Bingo. sew up the movie rights. This Thing has Talent!

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[OzPeter]

The robot is a freagin' joke. This is a publicity stunt. The only way this thing works is with the support crane

The cane is obviously there to stop the dam thing crashing to the ground if it over balances for whatever reason. Even Boston Dynamics does that with their prototypes.

As is it has absolutely ZERO real world application and even less than zero in a combat situation, short of maybe something in a movie.

We need to come up with the robotic equivalent of

No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

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[SuricouRaven]

Walkers are not practical for combat, but there may be a few niches. Cargo handling, for one. Not all cargo comes in convenient containerised forms and with enough space around it for forklifts. Or construction. Or disaster response, excavating collapsed buildings. Basically any time it would be handy for someone to be able to heft half-ton objects around.

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[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

In Aliens, the boxes the lifters lifted had lifter bars sticking out from the sides like ears. This is just stupid for packing crates together. Oh they could be removable but then you need a thick socket at least, wasting an inch or more of space on each side, and extra time to attach and detach them.

Stupid all around. Large ones aiding mining and logging might be useful, but that's it. Militarily these are stupid sitting ducks. There's a reason all aliens since War of the Worlds in the 1950s need "for

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[FatdogHaiku]

I'm not seeing that. Go full screen and you can see it is link chain, not cable. The part of the chain above the light blocks a view of the upper part of the light fixture, and enough of the light is shining through the chain to mostly wash it out, but it is there. During the first few seconds, the chains swinging makes it a bit hard to focus on, as clean chain is shiny, but you can see the light dimming a bit. At 58 seconds the light fixture comes back into view and it all makes sense.
YMMV.

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[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Those guys right fucking there seem a little too calm for a giant robot right there. Sorry, fake.

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[vivian]

To me the video looks fake because of the humans. movements of the humans look more robotic than the robot - head turns are unnaturally linear and stop abruptly, hand movements are a bit uncanny and everyone is apparently Botox-ed up to the max.

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[Chrontius]

I should point out that this is the prototype for a tracks-and-arms machine intended for ongoing Fukushima clean-up. We can't really ask what they did in Chernobyl - they just sent in unprotected conscripts to clean up - even replace the soviet flag when the radiation bleached it - after which they were either euthanized or tranquilized while the radiation poisoning ran its course. (Though, in the circumstances, it's hard to tell the difference, there) The lucky survived a while without cancer.

These d

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so what

[Osgeld]

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!

Re: so what

[Type44Q]

that was a knock off of battletech

Which was the biggest knock-off of them all.

13 feet and 1.5 ton ?

[testman123]

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

It's all about the power source

[RogueWarrior65]

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

Re:

[mdm-adph]

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

Stupid size

[Sperbels]

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?