This article was taken from the May 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
This four-metre tall, 4.5-tonne mega-machine is Kuratas, a robot that you can drive. You can make it wheel from place to place, move its arms to shoot out fireworks and BB pellets, and even grab objects. "I wanted to ride in a giant robot.
But nothing was being built except small robots like [Honda's] ASIMO," says its creator, Japanese artist Kogoro Kurata. "I couldn't wait any longer and thought, 'I'll build one myself.'"
Kuratas, which was revealed at the Wonder Festival in Japan last July, is mostly built from parts of a power shovel and moves on wheels. "For Kuratas's control system, I tried a few things -- using remote control via iPod Touch, reflecting human movement using Kinect -- but in the end a control stick proved most suitable," says Wataru Yoshizaki, the PhD student at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology who coded the software controlling Kuratas. "I'd like to develop it so that it can make subtle movements via a handle shaped like a human arm."
The cockpit has space for one adult.
Inside there's a large LCD screen, on which you can monitor scenes captured by video cameras attached to the front and back of the robot. You can also launch a camera-equipped drone (a four-axis helicopter), which gives you a bird's-eye view of your surroundings.
This prototype took about three years to build, and there are more models in the works.
Honshu-based Kurata, and Yoshizaki, plan to build a cheaper, easy-to-use version. The commercial prototype is nearly complete and will sell for 100 million yen (around £680,000), according to its creators. We're going to need a bigger <span class="s2">toy-box.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
