Skip to main content

Giant Mech Robot

Watch Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Control a Giant Mech Robot


Watch Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Control a Giant Mech Robot
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos piloted a giant "mech" robot at the 2017 Machine Learning, Home Automation, Robotics and Space Exploration (MARS) conference.
Credit: Jeff Bezos/Twitter
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos got to live out every 6-year-old's fantasy when he got behind the controls of a giant "mech" robot.
The Verge reports that Bezos tried out the 13-foot-tall (4 meters) robot yesterday (March 19) at his company's private Machine Learning, Home Automation, Robotics and Space Exploration (MARS) conference. Video of the bot, developed by Hankook Mirae Technology in South Korea, first surfaced in December in promotional clips. Live Science was skeptical of the robot's existence and functionality at the time. 
But the new video reveals that the robot does, indeed, exist. However, it's far from clear how much the mech (a term for piloted, humanoid robots) can really do. Bezos flails the arms around using controls in the robot's torso cockpit, but the robot does not take any steps and is tethered to the ceiling, presumably for safety reasons.
The robot does not pick anything up in the video, either, which is notable because its developers say that one of their goals is to create piloted robots for real-world jobs, like cleaning up the Fukushima nuclear power plant that was damaged in 2011 when a massive earthquake and tsunami struck Japan. So far, none of the footage of the mech has shown it manipulating objects. The massive bot also runs on external power, which means that, so far, it's unable to work untethered.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Electric car

Image
Robots at the Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif. put together electric cars. Credit: Tesla Motors The internal combustion engine had a good run. It has helped propel cars — and thus humanity — forward for more than 100 years. But a sea change is afoot that is forecast to kick gas-powered vehicles to the curb, replacing them with cars that run on batteries. A flurry of news this week underscores just how rapidly that change could happen. A quick recap: On Monday, Tesla announced that the Model 3, its mass-market electric car, would start rolling off production lines this week with the first handful delivered to customers later this month. Then on Wednesday, Volvo announced that every car it produces will have a battery in it by 2019, putting it at the forefront of major car manufacturers. Then came France’s announcement on Thursday that it would ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2040. All this news dropped just in time for Bloomberg New Energy Finance's latest electric
Read more
Image
Robotic Arm Turns Your Digital Doodles into Good Old-Fashioned Sketches A small robotic arm can bring your digital sketches to life, by re-creating your on-screen drawings with a pen and paper. The robotic drawing arm was designed by a team of researchers, who combined their knowledge of kinetic art,  drawing machines  and internet-connected microprocessor chips to develop the idea. The arm, dubbed Line-us, mimics the user's drawing motions to re-create a digital sketch with pen and paper, by connecting to an app via Wi-Fi. At its heart, the machine was developed to be a device for people to play with, said Robert Poll, a technologist and one of Line-us' co-founders. [ The 6 Strangest Robots Ever Created ] We wanted to create a product that was engaging and fun, rather than something that solved a particular problem or fulfilled a need," Poll told Live Science. "Our hope is that Line-us encourages people to doodle and draw, but also to find new and
Read more
Image
Martian Gardens' Help Scientists Find the Best Veggies to Grow on Mars Simulated "Martian gardens" allow NASA scientists to test which plants can be grown on Mars. This photo shows the results of a preliminary study on lettuce plants. From left to right: lettuce seeds grown in potting soil, Martian simulant with added nutrients, and simulant without nutrients. Credit: NASA/Dimitri Gerondidakis Simulated "Martian gardens" are helping NASA scientists learn which plants astronauts might be able to grow on the Red Planet. A human round-trip journey to Mars may take as long as two and a half years, and one major challenge for these kinds of extended missions is determining how to pack enough food for those astronauts. As such, scientists are studying ways for astronauts to grow their own crops and extend their food supply, because seeds take up less room and have a l
Read more