Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Japan builds an 18-meter-tall life-sized Gundam Robot that walks

Japanese engineers began to create an 18-meter robot from the anime Gundam, which will subsequently be installed in the port of Yokohama. This is stated in the message of the company-developer of the robot Gundam Factory.

The design of this massive humanoid completely coincides with the appearance of RX-78-2 Gundam, introduced in the original animated series in 1979. It will be 18 meters (59 feet) high, its weight will be about 25 tons, and is able to move. A 1/30 scale model of the robot and its future platform is visible below in the video.

This massive robot will subsequently be installed in the port of Yokohama.
This massive robot will subsequently be installed in the port of Yokohama.

Several manufacturers are involved in the construction of the Gundam Robot: Asratec for the control system, Yaskawa for the motors, and Kokoro for manufacturing the hands.

Only a few images of the project have filtered so far. The association nevertheless revealed in a series of videos the gigantic “skeleton” of the hands. According to the manufacturers, the length of one arm will be about two meters, and the weight is more than 200 kg. And well, the hand is already moving and we can see the size compared to the engineers in the video.

The idea is not only to move some parts like the previous ones but to walk and have 24 degrees of freedom of movement, something that poses an engineering level challenge.

The Gundam Robot is being developed using the Robot Operating System (ROS) open-source operating system and Gazebo simulation software. Engineers have already introduced a full-scale virtual copy of the robot, which will allow novice programmers to develop their own actions and poses for the device.