Giant Gundam Robot In Japan Makes Its First Moves (popularmechanics.com) 68
A giant Gundam in Japan's Port of Yokohama is now able to "pick up its legs to walk, bend its knees, turn its head, and contort its fingers to mime hand signals," reports Popular Mechanics. The 60-foot robot is the largest in the world. From the report: Inspired by the fictional Japanese robot of the same name -- which has appeared in over 50 TV series and movies since 1979, as well as many manga comics and video games -- this Gundam features a staggering 24 degrees of freedom. People in Japan have caught and shared a few glimpses of the engineering marvel. Considering the Gundam weighs about 25 tons, it's pretty insane to watch it raise both arms in the air and pick itself back up after kneeling.
Those efficiencies are thanks to precise engineering and design work, as outlined in a series of YouTube videos from Gundam Factory Yokohama. In one installment, the engineers give a tour of where they designed, built, and assembled the Gundam. The videos are a great way to really contextualize the size of this monster; from the metal fingertip to where the wrist will connect, for example, the hand is about 6.5 feet wide.
Those efficiencies are thanks to precise engineering and design work, as outlined in a series of YouTube videos from Gundam Factory Yokohama. In one installment, the engineers give a tour of where they designed, built, and assembled the Gundam. The videos are a great way to really contextualize the size of this monster; from the metal fingertip to where the wrist will connect, for example, the hand is about 6.5 feet wide.
Cultural appropriation. (Score:3, Funny)
it's pretty insane to watch it raise both arms in the air and pick itself back up after kneeling.
Hey Voltron, quit stealing Colin Kaepernick's moves!
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Neat (Score:3)
Re:Neat (Score:5, Funny)
i see you've not been to japan.
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i see you've not been to japan.
No, not since the late nineties.
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They had a non-moving one set up for a while in Odaiba as a tourist attraction. I'm sure plenty of people will come to see this thing.
Re:Neat (Score:4, Funny)
Now they just need to find a purpose for a giant toy that moves incredibly slowly.
Have you not seen Godzilla? The purpose is already there. The difference is the USA as usual is ignoring a serious threat while other countries are taking it seriously!
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I keep hoping for Gojiro to come up the Potomac and take care of this troublesome "President" for us.
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As opposed to the last million immobile monuments people made
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What a load of media BS. (Score:5, Informative)
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Its not walking its posing on some sort of support frame. and its not wreaking havoc, moving so slow they had to speed up the footage!
Yeah at 4x, is was still super slow... But the Japanese and their fascination with Gundam is something to see.
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Rose Twitter: "All these rich people wasting money on things like rockets and electric cars make me sick. Money should be being spent on things that help people suffering today!"
Japan: "Hey everyone, we just built a skyscraper-sized working Gundam!"
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Right. It's more like the tallest, heaviest marionette ever. If it was doing all of that under its own power, that would be impressive.
Re:What a load of media BS. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not impressive? It's the most impressive real-life, full-size gundam I've ever seen. Sorry their first concept model couldn't do any martial arts.
It's beautiful design work, and a cool engineering feat. Why are nerds so fucking fickle?
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I agree. I wasn't as impressed after watching the video as I was at just the description in the summary.
It is still a rather impressive feat of engineering just not as extraordinary as I originally thought.
And this is not first time it has moved. (Score:1)
This object has previously been reported as 'walking', though it was similarly being supported and the movement were less.
So false, not first movement.
So false, not walking
So false, not a robot
True, in Yokohama
1 out of 4 is intolerable truth rate.
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Exactly. The article made it sound like they'd built a robot that actually walks. That thing is just a puppet on a very big stick. It's pretty but an engineering marvel it is not.
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Its not walking its posing on some sort of support frame.
It didn't say the robot was walking. It said "pick up it's legs to walk". Like if I put my coat on to go outside, but got distracted and never went outside.
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Oh wait ... I just noticed the article's headline made the claim.
Wow, the /. summary removed the clickbait headline and only included the technically correct part.
How is it armed? (Score:2)
Does it use a beam weapon, beam saber, twin vulcans, hand cannon, cleaver or a giant mace? Let's hope they don't give it a twin buster rifle.
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Re: How is it armed? (Score:2)
ddtr (Score:3)
Inspired by the fictional Japanese robot of the same name -- which has appeared in over 50 TV series and movies
A Gundam is a type of mecha, this is the RX-78-2 that appeared in the original Mobile Suit Gundam. Though the "protagonist" gundam follows a common design theme they're different mechs altogether.
Re: ddtr (Score:1)
...of the same name
Honto?? You don't say.
Was it an extra set of legs? (Score:1)
How stupid is popular mechanics? (Score:4, Informative)
It's not doing any such thing when both its feet are off the ground. In case you didn't notice its attached to a crane on that massive gantry behind it.
Domo arigato misuta Robotto (Score:2)
Obvious - but unasked - question (Score:4, Insightful)
All intelligent people* looking at those videos will be asking themselves an obvious question:
WILL IT WALK UNSUPPORTED OR NOT ?
* i.e. Not Popular Mechanics writers or Slashdot Editors.
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I have heard the end goal is to have it walk from one spot to another back and forth. I haven't heard if the end goal includes walking unsupported or if its actually just a mobile gantry with the mecha miming the whole thing. My assumption is the latter given how its moves during these tests. No actual walking robot, Asimo, any of Boston Dynamic's creations move like that. Instead its movements are more akin to a full rigged and animated video game character. And just how video game characters don't actuall
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Bipedal robots are possible and have been successfully pulled off but never at this scale and its actually a really terrible way to move, unless your actual goal is to climb trees.
No land animal can move farther in a week than a fit human. Walking and jogging are very efficient. Energy is stored in the tendons. Your average robot can't do that. It would need supercapacitors (for electrically actuated robots) or accumulators (for hydraulics) to store energy, and to be designed to make use of the energy that way. It should be physically possible, though.
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I'm no biologist but I'd reckon our stamina has more to do with other factors than it does specifically our use of two legs.
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Facts needed.
Re: Obvious - but unasked - question (Score:2)
Re:Obvious - but unasked - question (Score:5, Funny)
All intelligent people* looking at those videos will be asking themselves an obvious question:
WILL IT WALK UNSUPPORTED OR NOT ?
* i.e. Not Popular Mechanics writers or Slashdot Editors.
A half competent person would just notice it isn't even supporting its own weight.
Even at 4x speed it floats in the air in much the same way that bricks don't.
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That style of reply reminds me of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for some reason.
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Or double-whoosh, perhaps?
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I almost wrote "for some reason" in quotes for extra obviousness but I thought that was overkill. Apparently not.
Re: Obvious - but unasked - question (Score:2)
Intelligent people watching the video are saying oh neat, and not left wondering much.
Because intelligent people don't need to be told there are not 25 ton bipedal robots walking around under their own power in 2020.
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Absolutely not. Walking is all about center of balance. In order for it to lift its right foot, it has to first shift the entire upper body probably 15 or more feet to the left to make sure it is balanced on the left foot first. Then it can lift the right. Then it has to shift that weight forward so it can fall onto the right foot. Next, it will have to shift all the weight 30 feet to the right so that it can lift the left leg. And so on. Poor pilot in the head is going
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What about giant spikes that punch through the ground to anchor it while it walks? /sarcasm
It doesn't walk (Score:2)
What the hell .. while it's somewhat impressive and cool .. it doesn't walk. If it did walk, THAT would be super impressive. Still, I hope it inspires someone to make a robot that big that does walk.
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What the hell .. while it's somewhat impressive and cool .. it doesn't walk. If it did walk, THAT would be super impressive. Still, I hope it inspires someone to make a robot that big that does walk.
Yeah, I don't quite understand it either unless they plan to incrementally upgrade it.
I would think step 1 should have been to create a fully working 10 foot model to work out the kinks first.
A 10 foot model would be much easier to handle but is still large enough that everything should still work the same way
and parts are large enough to easily work on.
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I think step 1 was the Life-Sized Unicorn Gundam Statue. It's a fixed statue that has only has a few moving parts on the knees, chest and head.
Step 2 is the Gundam Factory Yokohama model that we're talking about here.
Step 3 is going to be the first generation of a fully motorized, stand-alone giant robot.
Step 4 is going to be a much more agile version of step 3.
Step 5 is going to be a fully armoured model of step 4 equipped with weapons.
Step 6: profits!
He's no match for this one: (Score:1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
And this one was also made in Japan!
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Your information is out of date, my friend. These videos were obtained through various covert means, at great cost to the U.S.A. At least 10 good men gave up their lives to bring it across the line. That sort of thing. [youtube.com].
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...and I bet Mechagodzilla [wikipedia.org] would kick its ass!
For the non-roboticists (Score:2)
this Gundam features a staggering 24 degrees of freedom.
For the non-roboticists, that means joints. Degrees of Freedom is a really stupid non-descriptive turn of phrase. Also standard in robotics.
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Well, it's a bit more than just joints, or it should be. A ball and socket joint gives you an extra degree of freedom over a hinge joint, and when the joint has limited degrees of rotation (i.e. always) it shouldn't count as a full degree of freedom. But I'm sure that those limits aren't considered in press releases.
That's not a robot (Score:1)
It's a giant puppet connected to the building behind it. This is about as impressive as a Punch and Judy show.
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FIY, a motorized arm bolted to the floor that can move a car door in a factory is also a robot.
Signed,
Captain Pedantic
I see ... (Score:3)
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Wait, I hear they are not in charge of Gundam.
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Denial by a government agency is as good as an admission of responsibility.
Not a robot (Score:2)
This is not a robot - just a huge mechanical humanoid marionette. It is as much robot as a back-hoe.
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Hi there, I see you need the same information as scott_evil above.
FIY, a motorized arm bolted to the floor that can move a car door in a factory is also a robot.
Signed,
Captain Pedantic
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So say a kitchen blender is a robot too?
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Wikipedia: "A robot is a machine - especially one programmable by a computer - capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. Robots can be guided by an external control device or the control may be embedded within."
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OK the then. The Kitchen Blender without a timer cannot be considered a robot, I give you that. The one with timer...maybe? But a dish or cloth washers definitely are. In fact these interact with environment more than this mannequin.
But seriously, is any dummy a "robot'? If so there is plenty of them in Home Depot for Hallowing...All these and the one here are really a variant of automaton or animatronics, not robots:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Great for a theme park (Score:2)
Bandai's going a bit overboard (Score:3)
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Never mind the clippers, how much time is it going to take to paint all those parts and how much is it going to cost for all that paint!
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What if someone gave Boston Dynamics $1B (Score:1)