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Your Own Mecha
BJH writes "A Japanese company by the unfortunate name of tmsuk has just announced the world's largest robot capable of carrying a person - the 3.5m tall, 5 ton T52 Enryu HyperRescueRobot.
Their product site is in Japanese, but here's a few fun facts: it's 10m wide with its arms fully outstretched, is powered by an onboard water-cooled three cylinder direct injection diesel engine, has a maximum speed of 3Km/h, and carries seven 680,000-pixel CCD cameras with a separate monitor for each camera.
If no whiny 14-year-olds are available to pilot it, it can be remotely controlled (with a dummy plug in the cockpit, presumably)."
However the projects were stomped due to several reasons:
Over 90 years and counting !
They aren't releasing them internationally yet.
Me, I want a megadeus. I'd prefer full size, but I'll settle for a seven foot one if it comes to that.
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
It's intended for use in areas hit by natural disaster - earthquakes, for example. The name 'Enryu' could be translated as 'Helpful Dragon' (the 'en' is part of the Japanese word for 'rescue' or 'aid').
NEWS
Releasing new model rescue robot "T-52 support dragon" with fire fighting coming out first system (Inc.) the Kitakyushu city National Fire Prevention and Control Administra,
(Germany) fire fighting laboratory, the Kyoto university and others and development
Corporation (high main Yoichi Chief Executive Officer: below head office Kitakyushu city) 2004 January 11th (day), the Kitakyushu city National Fire Prevention and Control Administra and
the independent administrative corporate body fire fighting laboratory, Assistant Professors Kyoto university Yokokouzi the new model rescue robot "T-52 support dragon which was developed
(...)" at the Kitakyushu city fire fighting coming out first system which is held at the Kitakyushu city Moji Ku it released.
The "T-52 support dragon" in order to be able to execute the necessary job of real power at such as disaster actual place, total height approximately 3.45 m, at weight
approximately 5 t and worldwide biggest size, adopting hydraulic drive system for drive of the upper body and the like which possesses 2 arms.
The person boarding to the robot, either one of operation and the remote manipulation which utilizes the radio and the mobile communication device etc.
it can select according to circumstance.
The "T-52 support dragon" was developed for utilization development of the rescue robot it was formed by the member of "prevention of disasters robot development conference".
did the design production of the robot, the Kitakyushu city National Fire Prevention and Control Administra police/policing anti section emergency rescue section, adopted,
the opinion of the specialist of the fire fighting disaster relief robot engineering of
Assistant Professors Kyoto university Yokokouzi who does the research of the independent administrative corporate body fire fighting laboratory and the remote manipulation type robot etc.
which do the research of the rescue robot from stage of the design. Design went Takashi Satoshi Takahashi of the robot creator (the Kyoto university venture representation).
In addition, the Kyushu Institute of Technology which is the local university institution which does the research of the robot,
Fukuoka prefecture and Kitakyushu city of the Fukuoka prefecture industrial engineering center and the local self-governing community etc., also
foundation Fukuoka prefecture industrial technology promotion foundation participated.
Released as for the "T-52 support dragon" with the experimental model, to work actually, furthermore development improvement is needed with the latest fire fighting coming out first system.
Adjusting to intended purpose such as durability heat resistance, and improvement of work ability the schedule which keeps continuing development.
If I remember correctly in the movie she did use a real robot that is in industrial use today.
Not sure who makes the thing though?
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
Even IN SOVIET RUSSIA, and covered with hot grits that joke is bad.
Speaking of legs, I'm disappointed this thing doesn't have legs. But it has what looks like caterpillar tracks and a front loader, WTF?
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
ikura desu ka
(ikura -> pronounced as ikula)
If I remember correctly in the movie she did use a real robot that is in industrial use today.
Not sure who makes the thing though?
It's made by Caterpillar. My father works for them and just after Aliens came out he got to tour their main plant in Illinois. He got to see the loaders (or whatever they're called). They were fully functional prototypes and they let them use them in the movie in exchange for advertising. If you notice in the movie, Caterpillar's logo is on the machine. I don't know if they are in regular use now or not, I looked at their web site and didn't see them listed in their products section.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
Um, no. A clean shot with what? Your grandma's 22 isn't going to bring down an M1A1 Abrams. Neither is your nephew's AK47 or indeed any small-arms. A heavy chain machine gun won't either. And while it's true that there are a distressingly large number of Warsaw Pact derivative (and unfortunately even NATO derivative) rocket-propelled grenade launchers out there, successful operation of an anti-tank weapon is not plug-and-play.
They are vulnerable to mined roads, etc. But then, so is everything (except hovercraft?)
The Blackhawk is a helicopter. It's intrinsically fragile. (Even the Apache -- which is the combat helicopter you probably meant to reference -- turned out to be surprisingly vulnerable even to small arms fire.)
But the helicopters are not nearly as vulnerable as a mech would be. Despite forty years of cool anime, it's time for the fanboys to understand: Mech warriors are a dumb idea and a waste of resources. The human form is not particularly well-adapted for industrial warfare, and it offers no advantages for modern weapon systems. Indeed, I think you can argue well that the human form forces compromises that detract from combat effectiveness.
That's one of the lessons of Matrix Revolutions: There is no way -- even with $100 million -- to make mech warriors look less than stupid, because they are instrinsically stupid.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I've never seen Aliens but I remembered reading about these robots a while back(10/30/2003). Its a USA Today story about the Israeli's using remote control Caterpillar bulldozers to destroy Palesinian homes.
The Caterpillar manloader is not real. Caterpillar has no currently available equipment that looks like or operates like the manloader in the film. I did see video back when they intro'd the movie, and the special effects designer did say they'd caused all kind of problems for Caterpillar. People wanted to know where they could BUY one. The special effects people constructed a mock-up and then used CGI for the motion sequences. Take a good look at those scenes again...that's not a very real looking Ripley driving the thing
actually, I just listened to part of the comentary track on the new Aliens special edition dvd, and Cameron mentions that there is a body builder in the "suit" behind sigorny weaver, helping her move the plastic arms and feet. She was basically standing on his feet.
there is more to it than that, including some kind of rig behind it helping to support it all.
Many anti-vehicular mines have foot-long poles sticking out the top of them. It would have to be a powerful hovercraft.
"Verbing weirds language." -- Calvin
"successful operation of an anti-tank weapon is not plug-and-play."
Isn't it? I have a different opinion. The standard anti-tank weapon of the swedish army takes no time to understand on how to use. It is simply a point and click weapon with no inteligence.
Simply point and fire - if you remeber to fire at the weakest points (the side and rear armor or upper armor) you are almost sure to make a kill in up to 300 meters on Russian tanks, however it is better at closer range.
Since the armor on a M1A1 is better I suppose you need to fire from a close range or hit it twice (you will need two weapons for this since it is a one shot weapon), but it is easy to use the weapon. Since the weapon cost about $10000 so is it also very cheap compared to the tank...
A great weapon to even the playfield for infantry and artillery when confronted with armor.
I would like to point out that these weapons is common in most western armys and that they are rather easy to come across on the black market. Here it has even been used by rivalising MC-gangs to attack each others houses.
First of all the Gasraki used "magic" supermolecules that repaired and grew stronger when damaged. quite contrary to the basic laws of thermaldynamics.
Also the whole question of "Fear" goes back to the first time infantry faced down a bunch of elephants. the Roman's intially rant from these beasts until they discovered that you could kill them by flanking and throwing javelins into their undersides. The Romans stopped running and started taking them down. (yeah that was the first mecha engagement)