Forget the lifesize scopedog...

[Montarvillois]

OK,

The era of th egiant walking killing machines has begun:

Clip Download link

Here's something to dream about tonight

For the full page, follow that link http://www.sakakibara-kikai.co.jp/products/other/LW.htm

Enjoy

[Ed.Coli]

Very very interesting, though the practical applications escape me so far.

[GobotFool]

If it actually walked I'd be impressed, but this thing just scoots at barely a crawl. It's nothing more than a glorified mecha toy.

[Skypoet]

Very very interesting, though the practical applications escape me so far.

Strolling around in the park, maybe?

[the white drew carey]

If it actually walked I'd be impressed, but this thing just scoots at barely a crawl. It's nothing more than a glorified mecha toy.

Crawl before you walk?

Did the first automobile move at 200mph?

Did the first plane reach 100k feet, or break mach 1?

You have little faith...

[wolfx]

New mobile system for geriatrics with added gattling gun against muggers?

This thing would be a hit with grandma.

[Mechamaniac]

Nifty, though it really only skates. I guess that's one solution to the gyro/balance problem that seems to plague today's humanoid robots.

Still neat though. I wonder who and why they built the thing?. Is it some sort of movie prop?, why the fake guns etc?

[Aegis!]

Can anyone say Destroids ?

OK , this might be just the first step , but did we have something like this 10 years ago ? no.

Imagine what we could achieve if a goberment supported this ?

[Dat Pinche Haro!]

sorta reminds me of that art off the carterage off the first metal gear

[JB0]

I prefer this, personally.

http://www.plustech.fi/Walking1.html

Sure, it doesn't have a gatling, and it's a hexapod, but...

[areaseven]

Does it say stuff like, "Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply."? If not, then why bother?

[mikeszekely]

If it actually walked I'd be impressed, but this thing just scoots at barely a crawl. It's nothing more than a glorified mecha toy.

Crawl before you walk?

Did the first automobile move at 200mph?

Did the first plane reach 100k feet, or break mach 1?

You have little faith...

Right right... and following that line of reasoning, it'll still be awhile before anyone's stomping off to work in their Zaku... but maybe I can get me a Ball in my lifetime...

[yellowlightman]

I question it's authenticity, the videos and pictures are really bad quality and why would a test walker have a faux chain gun on it....?

[Commander McBride]

Because it's made by a bunch of Otaku. They probably put it on for the cool factor.

Actually, looking at the video, it does lift its feet to move. It's just that it only lifts an inch or two.

[NERV]

practicality be damned, that thing is badass. i wanna be up in that cockpit, strolling the streets, anyone who honks at me for going to slow will regret it as soon as i can turn around. lol

is a lamborghini 'practical'?

is the Qrio 'practical'?

is buying valks 'practical'? (all the 'normal' people seem to think it isnt )

something dont need to be practical to exist, it just fun stuff

[NERV]

and come on why wouldnt you be impressed? its a bipedal piloted mech, that thing is the first step towards an AT-ST, then Destroids, look at the very first cars, planes, stoves, tv's, radios, computers, they are a joke compared to the current stuff, but they developed

[1/1 LowViz Lurker]

I'm more interested in the ones that sony and honda made:

-They are about human sized

-in the future I can imagine them serving us at some fast food place. Just like the robot from jetsons cartoon

-they can get up after falling (remember ED209's prob? Robots that fall and can't help themselves are a waste of time)

Now imagine for a second if we added a jetpack of some sort onto the human sized robots? And then we added features to remote pilot the human robots for missions? (put a camera eyeball in the head) Exploration in dangerous places would be ideal for a humanoid robot. Remember the virtual reality suit in the movie lawnmower man? Something similar to that could be the interface to the macine.

I think those ones that take on a human size and form are the best in terms of realism. Then if they want, they can experiment with the larger bipedal mech stuff.

Unless those bipedal ones could boost jump and hop like in macross, I see them as being ed209-ish in clumsiness. You need proper arms to pick yourself up and animal like agility to be useful.

Edited April 6, 2005 by 1/1 LowViz Lurker

[NERV]

I'm more interested in the ones that sony and honda made:

-They are about human sized

-in the future I can imagine them serving us at some fast food place. Just like the robot from jetsons cartoon

-they can get up after falling (remember ED209's prob? Robots that fall and can't help themselves are a waste of time)

Now imagine for a second if we added a jetpack of some sort onto the human sized robots? And then we added features to remote pilot the human robots for missions? (put a camera eyeball in the head) Exploration in dangerous places would be ideal for a humanoid robot.

I think those ones that take on a human size and form are the best in terms of realism. Then if they want, they can experiment with the larger bipedal mech stuff.

Unless those bipedal ones could boost jump and hop like in macross, I see them as being ed209-ish in clumsiness. You need proper arms to pick yourself up.

got a link to the sony human sized one? only sony humanoid i kno of is Qrio which is less than 2 feet tall

[1/1 LowViz Lurker]

Sorry the sony one wasn't human size. Must have been confused. But it will be aproaching what we should expect in the near future as more money is made from robots. doh

I think robots really could have practical purposes if there were just masses of people buying them up because of practical purposes. Ie lets say a robot that walks you dog or something? It's just a case of them having a good use rather than being only for hobbyists like with personal comupters in the early days.

I think though that it is starting with toy-scale robots first because it's affordable for the masses for now, but in the future when more and more practical uses are found we could possibly see those bipedal regult style machines. (patrolling an area like a cop or something to guard a building?)

The forest walker that was in another thread is very interesting since it is real. As technology into walking robots gets better and the robots get over the "helpme, I've fallen over!" problem it wouldn't suprise me if in the future we see the designs from sci-fiction. It doesn't seem all that strange to me for robots co-operating together to do a simple tasks that we humans could do. Say for example a vehicle that is automated to pick up walking robots from a stop, open its doors to let them in, close the doors, then leave and drop the walker robots to some new loaction)

Edited April 6, 2005 by 1/1 LowViz Lurker

[NERV]

well i may be thinking way to far into the future, but if robots were made tod o human tasks, then companys would buy them for that reason, prettymuch anyone who doesnt own a business or help develop new technology will lose their jobs, either the human race will become dependant ont he robots as nobody will really need to work except for a few leaders, or the jobless people will revolt and laws will be put in keeping robots from doing jobs to replace employees, but then that would prettymuch make it illegal to use one aorund the house because that is the job a maid could do, o well too many factors to tihnk about, just when/if it happens we may go irobot or matrix

[1/1 LowViz Lurker]

The 'matrix' and 'AI' are both pretty close imo: humans already do lose jobs once machines can do the tasks more efficiently, forcing people to train for new skills in some other job.

But if we didn't progress we wouldn't have so much leisure time and convenience.

tasks that would take ages to do, now have been made easier(including killing)

UAVs could be thought of as a start to it all, (watch macross plus) but humans are still needed just as programmers are still needed to make new programs to make the robots better. I like to think of all this machinery as somehow dehumanising of society, where people's self worth and life is lessened when thier skills is no longer needed and that if the elite had thier way the whole world could just be run by some massive super computer like in appleseed.

The technology that we have as convenient as it all is, somehow has a dark side to it, as if we were forbidden to have it. (weapons of mass destruction anyone? It's a bit like in conan: the gods didn't want to give us the "fire from heaven - the knowledge to make steel weapons" but rebellious angels stole it from heaven to give to us and created this mess of arms race)

It's not that we don't apreciate thier positives (that the technology can be used for good) but that some "mad scientist" type takes control of it all and uses it against us to control the whole population and keep themselves at the top of the pyramid. (look at how easily privacy has been striped away and big brother is able to spy on you. Pay close attention to movies like "enemy of the state" and the date that this was released...almost as if the government is trying to tell you: "this is what we plan to do in real life; here's a glimpse of the future, get used to it. Cause it will happen soon")

There should always be balances and checks to advances and this is why I suspect why certain sci-fi movies are made: to condition us as a mass population to eventually accept the vision as being inevitable. You could think of it as a kind of mind conditioning. They want to test your reaction. The more violent, the longer they will postphone the eventual plan to introduce something (a new policy like national id cards) they know the majority will be against.

I think the future won't be the same as the present where it is as easy as protesting or rioting if you don't get your way: it will be similar to that movie Fortress (the one with christopher lambert) where anyone who disagrees with the popular idea of the time will be kept in some high tech prison and tracked down.

Notice how in all sci-fi there is always a catastrophe with machines turning against us? Not just terminator but think of HAL, the AI computer that goes rogue and judges humans behaviour and tries to preserve itself. Too much high technology can be a bad thing when it isn't used ethically. If we did have robots running the world without our help, the reason for human existence would go away.

I particularly like how in terminator the "mark of the beast" was subtly referenced in a scene where Kyle Reese shows Sarah Conner the laser skin marking, indicating he was in some sort of nazi-robot death camp and given a number and used as a guinea pig for study of humans and torture before our mass termination. You could think of sarah as a "Mary" figure who will have a virgin birth (since the person she did it with didn't exist) of a messiah (John Conner) who saves the world against the machines.

This is very timely for christians who believe that a biometric chip (placed inside and under the skin - look up "Digital Angel" in google) will be a strong candidate for a future "mark of the beast" on all humans when our world reaches a point in time and enters into a world government and we get used to a cashless society where all transactions are done digitally. (already there are supermarkets where you can scan things yourself and pay that way - this is the future but the future is now.)

At the risk of sounding too much of a luddite: "technology could be evil! Human can't always trust it. The digital age, where anything can be editied easily and hacked into, and used to control, spy, cheat and steal; could be the age where people give up thier worries and concerns and rely way too much on the machine"

In anime Ghost in the shell pretty much touches on this theme of what it means to be human. So does blade runner. Only in real life the robots in those shows are actually ourselves, looking for meaning when systems control every aspect of your life and we become the mindless robots ourselves in every thing you do. This is why I find it odd that people shun the more "spiritual" aspects of the movies because to me its relevent to humans who use technology everyday without thought, (think about the computer we type on and how it could be monitored with spyware loggers of your keystrokes) but yet still look at some older movies as science "fiction" when they are pretty close to where we are now. (cloning for commercial use in "sixth day" (the neopets come to mind ), "virtual reality"-type graphics and player-created "mods" in games from the "matrix" movies, and even remote-piloted, unmanned vehicles or AI controlled ones, with sony's Stealth movie. Even the movie Gattaca is relevent today. Eugenics: people will soon be judged soley on thier genes. The worthless ones who may be more susceptible to diseases are taken out and we have engineered a "perfect" society.

Ok so the characters aren't real but the themes are serious ones that need to be considered, because if a lot of technology is kept secret and is actually more advanced than what the public is allowed to see, than the fiction in the movies isn't fiction at all. It's more a sneak peak into what really going to be happening but the introduction of it all has to be so that you are in a state of calm and willingness to accept it eventually. It may not match the fictional image 100% (for example the popular giant humanoid robot "Gundams" in anime) but some are at least a little surprised at the sight of real working "miniture tanks" that remind them of "guntank" mechs they've seen. "Replacing humans" isn't an idea that is way far into the future imo, we could be closer than we think.

Edited April 6, 2005 by 1/1 LowViz Lurker

[Black Valkyrie]

Very impressive. Begun the robot wars has

Does movie clip has audio cuz I download it and no sound !

[Gui]

No sound for me either...

This thing reminds me of a robot toy I had when I was kid: it had some little wheels under the feet to allow them slide onto the floor in giving the illusion of a proper walk... It moved forward like this 'vehicle' in the clip but it was just a toy and this one is nothing more except bigger IMO

[Ed.Coli]

and come on why wouldnt you be impressed? its a bipedal piloted mech, that thing is the first step towards an AT-ST, then Destroids, look at the very first cars, planes, stoves, tv's, radios, computers, they are a joke compared to the current stuff, but they developed

I like mechs as much as the next person, but using them in combat is completely ridiculous. You referenced Destroids and the AT-ST, but what did they ever do that actually worked in a practical military sense? The AT-STs were destroyed by logs and tripwires, and Destroids were a joke, relegated to the status of manned turrets defending the Macross. The only destroid that was almost worth it was the Monster, and the legs were pretty much useless on that one (could have done better with treads). Fact is, bipedal robots would be good for, maybe, construction or excavation, where terrain could prove a disadvantage for wheeled vehicles. But a bipedal weapon of that sort remains impractical for military uses. Even if, theoretically, you could make it faster and increase its rate-of-turn, it would still offer no battlefield advantage to offset its cost and fragility. The high profile of a bipedal weapon is a huge shot in the foot, both figuratively and literally; one shot, and it would either explode or trip, making it worthless. The only way a bipedal machine would come close to being useful as a weapon is if it were an "Exo" type powered suit, a la the APU in Matrix Revolutions.

[That NOS Guy]

Dear God.....

It's a Sentinal scout alker from Warhammer 40,000.

All I have to do is invent a lascannon and I so want.