Original Japanese link.

English-language link.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=9801

The thing would fall over on a 1% slope.

It doesn't even walk, it just shuffles on wheels.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...wtopic=8492&hl=

This is better than a Hummer with a .50 BMG and a TOW on the back...how?

I'll tell you what WOULD make it just short of invincible. Make the cabin smaller so it can only be driven by school children. No one can beat a mecha driven by seventh graders.

It is a little known fact that nezumi is in fact hand carved by seventh generation Swedish master craftsmen from a solid block of awesome.

Cool, if I ever have to fight slow moving monsters from 10 meters away on a smooth, even surface, I'm usin' that bad boy!!!

Actually, it'd make an awesome addition to a customized paintball park....

Hey anybody here seen "Aliens." Wasn't a lot of that gadget real?

well those crazy japs have made a powerd exoskeleton like system.

all we realy need is to scale it up some and the loader suits of aliens fame should be workable.

for combat tho is still to slow. and the "suit" linked to in this topic isnt balanced by the pilots own balance. still, there are some selfbalancing robots out there now. scale em up and replace much of the torso with a cabin and things start to get interesting.

so while the item in the article may be just for show. the baseline tech is being developed as we speak and just need some more years of refinement so that it can more or less match the human body for speed while carrying a load thats bigger then any human to date can handle

I've thought about it, and I'm gonna throw my hat in with the pro-giant robot crowd on this one.
I was thinking about the Wright brothers, and how, after seeing their first flight, how many people "knew" that a contraption like that would have no practical application and didn't even hardly fly, really. No one imagined the F-23 at that point, not even the Wrights. Sure, that thing in the video is a toy, but it's also a statement of vision. (The guns are a little silly though. I think they work against credibility.)
I've seen that little three-foot tall walking 'bot that can climb stairs and so on too, and I'm convinced that it can be done. And it seems to me that if it can be done, it will, regardless of if it needs to be.

I wasn't really referring to the shuffling mecha nearly as much as the recent powered exo skeletons, Asimo, and other recent robotics developments. I realize the shuffling mecha is really not that impressive.

Houseclearing, city combat.

Send in the legged drone to look around, and where a wheeled vehicle would stop, it can climb over.

Aswell as use hands to open doors etc.

Best application of "intelligence" would probably be a marine in VR gear some location nearby, transmitting to the Drone by remote or wire.

Construction sites, where forklifts are too clumsy or to carry stuff up stairs.

Plenty of potential applications for a legged robot, just a matter of getting it good and cheap enough.

Sometimes I wonder if this whole thing was just an "It seemed like a good idea at the time" project or what.

Besides the overall "Coolness" of it, is there really a tactical aplication for a mobile walker unit? Not to derail this but even the most recent Metal Gear game debunked the whole walking tank thing. If you mounted almost any type of cannon on it, the recoil would almost knock down it as there's not enough contact surface to brace the shock. (Almost as there are some recoil-less weapons.) And it would provide a much bigger profile, ie TARGET, to aim for.

Maybe we should ask some of our resident Mech-jockeys here what their take on this is.


You know... I'm really tempted to post this on the Penny-Arcade boards with just he heading of "Metal..... Gear"

Oh gods, not another one of these arguments.

*Whine.*

I've seen them before. They're ugly.

MMU1, The critics of the late 1800's were just as sure of their understanding of science as we are of ours. Just 'cause we haven't thought of a way to do it yet is not enough to say that it can't be done. It sounds to me like you're saying "They only thought they were right, I know I am."

I reiterate, what that video shows me is that there are some (strange but) dedicated people who want that badly to make it happen. Historically, that pretty much means that it will, eventually. Call it the 'because it is there' line of thought. You seem to be arguing that since it isn't the 'best' idea, it won't take off. Isn't that like saying that muscle cars shouldn't be because economy cars can? I think these 'bots'll exist in a more advanced form than we're seeing here for no other reason than a bunch of people with engineering degrees think they are cool.

And don't limit yourself to thinking of "battlefield" machines.

Besides, there are some pretty significant -some would say dominant- machines trundling around this planet making pretty good use of the 'walker' design. Billions, in fact. Mind you, they've got some pretty sophisticated computers running them.

I think what he was saying is that it will never be practical. It is to complicated to ever be practical. Why use it when we have more conventional and established means of doing the same thing?

It will never be used on the battlefield in any kind of combat capacity I assure you. And it isn't because there is some new thing waiting to be discovered that I don't know about.

Something’s are absolute no matter how much you want them not to be. The people who criticized the Wright brothers did so from a place of ignorance. No one knew anything about flying back then. Since people hadn't done it, they assumed it couldn't be done.

We are not criticizing from a place of ignorance. We all know how physics work, how practicality works etc.

Everyday, we use gadgets and do things that are impractical. You know anybody who plants a flower garden? Why use a riding mower when you can get exercise and save money with a push mower?

"It will never be used on the battlefield in any kind of combat capacity...." You say. By "it" do you mean the primitive contraption in the video? I agree. "...used on the battlefield..." could it be used somewhere else? "...combat capacity..." as I said, how about another capacity?

Why did armies wear dashing, colourful uniforms for so long when mottled earth tones made more sense? We put sattelites in orbit so we can get a clearer picture of David Letterman.

Chuck Yeager wrote about a time when he "knew" that an airplane couldn't fly unless it's wingspan was greater than its length. How can we possibly know that a technology is not going to be possible? Of course we are all speaking from a place of ignorance. We simply cannot know. Today we take for granted that we have tiny portable music players with no moving parts. Ask your parents if they thought that was possible thirty years ago.

Anyway, I cannot prove something in the future will happen any more than you can prove that it won't, so I guess we're both fools. I'm done.