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Giant Mech Robots From Japan
New submitter Hanike writes "According to The Verge, Japanese hi-tech company Suidobashi Heavy Industry is developing a 13-foot, diesel-powered, real Mecha robot called Kuratas! 'The two-man team — artist Kogoro Kurata and robotics researcher Wataru Yoshizaki — isn't stopping there, either. Suidobashi wants to mass produce, starting at the low price of $1.35 million. So, what do you get for the money? Kuratas has over 30 hydraulic joints that allow it to freely move its arms, legs, and torso. It can fire water bottle rockets and fireworks, and its 6,000 round-per-minute BB Gatling guns are controlled with the pilot's smile; part of Yoshizaki's V-Shido (read like bushido, as in "way of the samurai") control system. In order to get around, the four-legged mech uses ordinary wheels, but the Suidobashi team wants to get it walking in order to navigate uneven terrain.'"
The interesting thing about this is that it's not totally Japanese project. Apple's research center Xerox and Microsoft Research have provided lots of the technology to the two researchers and it runs partly with embedded Windows OS. If you want to program the robot you can just plug in Visual Studio with full debugging capabilities!
How are you supposed to stop smiling when you are mowing down your enemies?
If I am reincarnated
I'd like to be a nigger
my brain a little smaller
but my cock would be much bigger
'nuff said. Should have kept trying.
I can't wait for the gauss cannons and jump jets!
Am glad I've lived long enough to see this built.
Now, I need to live long enough to afford it.
to be mass-produced for monster truck rallies here in the states. XP
Replace the water guns with real guns and you have your first SkyNet robot. http://terminator.wikia.com/wiki/Series_T1
The robot can only be controlled by a small person such as a 12 year old girl with orange hair.
A mech with wheels is like a sword with a foam blade.
Battletech coming to life!!!
When they have one shaped like Gigantor I'll have to cry because can't have it.
Reactor online.
Sensors online.
Weapons online.
All systems nominal.
Will this program be secretly run by the Agriculture Ministry as well?
Have gnu, will travel.
Attention leftist free software lunatics hippies.
"Giant Mech Robots From Japan" Is the most important thing on your radar?
What a bunch of crap.
Why don't you talk about your wonderful hero, the Obama and Obamacare CUTTING MEDICINE FROM MEDICARE.
Huh? Wake up you losers, your socialist schemes are drowning us all, as predicted. Are you all getting your free colonoscopies from the state?
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/rationing-begins-states-limiting-drug-prescriptions-medicaid-patients
"In Alabama, Medicaid patients are now limited to one brand-name drug, and HIV and psychiatric drugs are excluded.
Illinois has limited Medicaid patients to just four prescription drugs as a cost-cutting move, and patients who need more than four must get permission from the state."
Interesting, but most of the construction looks non-functional and aesthetic - like the hands, for instance. It does not look sturdy enough to serve as a riot suppression device, nevermind anything serious.
Bubba with a mig welder, an old Asian cab-over-engine mini-bus type van, a junked Caterpillar frontend loader, and the frame from a US truck could probably make something similarly aesthetic which is actually able to perform work. Betcha it'd be more fun to pilot, too.
It'd certainly be fun to pilot, but what large machinery isn't? For a million dollars, you could build something quite comparable on your own.
Hell, for a bit more than a couple months of training and knowing the right people, you can get paid to operate heavy machinery which has much more capability.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Best Thing This Week
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
No Sarge!
Now, they need to make one with a giant scythe and bat wings so we can have Deathscythe, and one with angel wings for Wing Zero. /nerd
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Oh great, now someone's gonna have to put on their octocamo and fight their way into the bases until the Big Boss battle...
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Was the software for it written by Gowa Digital Systems?
I, for one, welcome our...
So, when can we see some awesome footage of these mass produced robotic overlords trashing Tokyo? It's traditional.
If you're in Canada, this was featured a year or so ago on Daily Planet on the Discovery Channel:
Daily Planet - Embedded with Mark Miller - Land Walker. Though it just burns me that they seem to not say "mech" at all.
I think this one was slightly cheaper...
How long until it's used for military applications?
the videos sucked. i wanted to see it in real action
if we could get a fusion reactor small/portable enough to power large lasers, shrink the U.S. Navys' rail gun and some long and short range missile packs, we could have our first real battle mech. With heavy enough armor and hardened components, I am so excited...
>> I think this one was slightly cheaper...
Only because they paid in Canadian loons.
This company is actually a subsideary of Infinite Stratos Corporation, LLC. based in Tokyo, Japan.
They use high-school aged kids because their reflexes are faster, but it gets the job done.
There was some competition between the test pilots, but things have evened out and settled down
(you know how emotional kids can get). Several countries already have their own models (as was
noted in the training videos) - exacly which countries is a closely guared secret, though.
..., and its 6,000 round-per-minute BB Gatling guns are controlled with the pilot's smile
This gives the term "land of the smiles" a totally different meaning.
"we are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
This brings a tear of joy to my eye... Finally, some overt examples of future technology. All that's left to fulfill my childhood vision of the future is flying cars, supersonic transports, torus-style space stations, and proper spacecraft (FTL optional but strongly encouraged).
as Denise replied I'm surprised that a mother able to earn $5896 in one month on the internet. have you read this page http://www.makecash16.com
I want two of them. Placed on either side of my drive way will do. It would show people I mean business.
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
Note how any time there is motion you only see a portion of the object. The arm movements and in-traffic video are clearly CGI, and the raise/lower video could be done by a crane from above since everything above the legs is cropped out.
And while we see the gatling barrels spinning, I don't see anything being fired out.
In other words, this is a sculpture, not a mech. I doubt it's anything other than an elaborate miniature plus a fake cockpit.
Praise be to the Machine-God and the God-Emperor on the Golden Throne.
It's on wheels. Who cares?
Wake me when it's bipedal.
I for one, welcome them
They say it they will be selling them for $1.35M each. But not many anime geeks can afford $1.35M toys. Is there some practical industrial application that the developers have in mind but don't seem to want to publicize at this point?
Is this like Tetsujin 28 or Gigantor?
I'll take mine with a Minigun and Hydra 70 rocket launcher.
Wait until my neighbor's dog sees me coming.
The point is to pummel to death an infestation of rodents with lethal amounts of BBs.
It's a tachikoma from Ghost in the Shell. Sadly it doesn't come in blue.
Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
to be mass-produced for monster truck rallies here in the states.
As usual science fiction is way ahead of reality, ten years to be precise. What you describe was the exact plot of Allen Steele's short story "Mudzilla's Last Stand", initially published in January of '93! From an article about Steele:
His writing shows a passion for the sometimes lurid tone and language of the lowest forms of popular culture, as in "Mudzilla's Last Stand," which details how future announcers will promote the battle of Mecha-men robots as a working class entertainment on the same order as Monster Truck Rallies.
I remember reading the story in Asimov's when it first appeared. Aside from being prophetic, it was a pretty good read. The plot is that a Japanese company builds a real battle mech much like the one in the TFA. The robot was intended to be genuine military hardware, but there were no takers because it turns out giant man-like metal monster robots are somewhat impracticable on real battlefields. Eventually the only prototype gets sold to, you guessed it, a promoter of monster truck rallies. You can guess what happens next... Or read the story.
Ok maybe not the weirdest.
Now all they gotta do is shrink 'em down to human sizes!
[The post title is the first thing that came to mind when I saw this story. Couldn't put a better version of it in because the filter said 'TOO MUCH REPETITION']