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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)."
All we need now are auto-balancing walking chassis and shoulder mount gatlins! You cant tell me military organizations havent already gotten their drooly mits over this one.!
But seriously, I think this is a great step in the right direction as far as conserving not only the lives of those in danger but also those of the brave people attempting to rescue them. What would be interesting to know is how soon American based construction and demolition corporations would be snapping this up.. Look close. This isnt much large than a standard issue BOBcat and the extra servo arms add tons of additional flexibility (npi)..
Bitch you KNOW the side.. WORLD MAFUCKIN WIDE..
It's not a Gundam. It's a first generation industrial labor.
;-)
A decade late, but might we soon see the birth of the Patlabor?
I've driven a lot of Bobcat and Case Loaders and this thing doesn't look 1) as stable and 2) as useful as a skid-steer front loader. It looks like the center of gravity is way to high!
Of course, it has pinchers, so bonus points for looking cool.
Maybe it's a step in the 'right' direction. (If world machine domaination and bloodshed is the goal) But I don't know if Machine soldiers are all that good of an idea. First, even tanks- as tough as they are, are preety easy to destroy. Just get a clean shot. Same thing with Blackhawk hellicopters. I wonder if it would be possible to actually 'mass-produce' something like this.
Riiiiiight, I'm guessing that's the same place you last saw the so-called "moon landings" too, right?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And then it doesn't even walk, let alone have an autocannon...
How the hell did this thread about the "world's largest robot capable of carrying a person" turn into a military discussion. When we see robots, why is it that we automatically think weapons? I realize that the military might be the first to pick up the new technology, just like it happened with airplanes and nuclear fission, but in the long term I can imagine peaceful uses, as they were intented in the first place by their original creators. People who invented airplanes and fission did it to make humans more enabled, happier - flying has always been a dream of humans envying birds, and the scientists thinking about fission meant it as an awesome source of energy. Once you're enabled and more capable, it's up to you what you do with it. You can use your newfound powers to live better, or to destroy something. Right now the military is heavily into unmanned toys, but I think in the future, the ratio of robots used for bettering the lives of humans to the amount used by the military will be very high.. just like the amount of commercial airplane flights outdo the military part. Why isn't anyone thinking about grandma in the nursing home "prison" being able to get out back home because she can take care of herself again, cuz she can 'dress up' into her robot clothes that helps her walk, drive, and shop? Is that such a scary future? The cave people must have been damn scared of fire first but where would we be without fire? Sure you can burn down your enemy's huts with fire, but these day's when we think fire that's not the first thing that comes to mind anymore. I'm sure it will be the same with robots.
That's a very fiction-oriented view of the military. They're interested in winning, period, and will evaluate new weapons on their ability to contribute to that goal and on the opportunity cost of adopting the weapons system.
Of course, since armies are led by people, it's entirely possible that mechs will be developed and adopted because "they look cool" and fall into fashion with the right person at the right time. But eventually, I predict, they will be abandoned because the weapons concept just doesn't make sense operationally.
If that were a desirable ability, we could put hydraulic lift rams on existing vehicles. We don't because, in fact, it's hard to do and not particularly useful. On the other hand, the human form factor means that the mech is critically balanced when upright -- a nudge from a traditional vehicle or a hit from a high-impulse round could conceivably knock the mech over. I think mechs come out on the losing side of this comparision, too.
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