A Japanese robotic company has shown off its latest advances in bringing to life a real Transformer in a 4-meter tall machine that transitions from a bipedal walking robot to a wheel-driven vehicle.
Brave Robotics’ J-deite RIDE can hold up to two people from either the car mode or the robot mode and the machine can be operated by remote-control via wireless network.
The company designed and developed the hardware, including the transforming mechanism and Asratec, a division of Japan’s SoftBank, developed the robot control system called “V-Sido.” This mechanism performs the robot motions such as the transformation, bipedal walking, wheel driving and more.
In the video, the robot shows off its partial motion, which is slow and clunky, and then slowly turns into a vehicle where two test riders get in after which it transitions once again to a robot. While the process is slow and nowhere near the automatic transitions of the movies or cartoon version of “Transformers,” it is still pretty cool and shows how far robotics have come in a short time.
