If you like cars, you must like the Transformers movies as well. Yet, if, somehow, you have never watched any of these movies at all, well, you can simply consider it as the kind of movies in which good alien robotic cars fight evil aliens in order to prevent the extinction of the human race. Now, if you think it is impossible to have such robots that can transform into cars and vice versa, you may want to think again. Believe it or not, Japanese companies have managed to build a real-life Transformer robot albeit in a small size and the robot is only a prototype as of now. Nevertheless, the companies plan to build a full-scale model eventually in the future.
Measuring 1.3 meters in height, this real-life Transformer comes as the result of joint collaboration among the Asratec Corporation, Brave Robotics and Tomy Co., Ltd. The latter is the original creator of the Transformer robots, contrary to the common belief that these robots come from America. This prototype weighs in at 35 kg and its body is dominated by the blue color.
By far, one thing that may concern people is the reason the companies build such a robot, which is fully functional. The robot can move, both in its humanoid robot form and in its automobile form. When it transforms into a car, it is capable of moving at the speed of 6 mph, provided it has a road clearance of about 1.5 inches. When it transforms into a robot, it can walk at a speed of up to 0.6 mph. In addition to that, its fingers, hands and arms are entirely movable as well.
This real-life Transformers robot is controlled using a proprietary piece of software called the V-Sido. This software comes from Wataru Yoshizaki, Ishido’s partner at the Asratec Corp. According to the creators, the prototype runs on a battery that lasts up to one hour, give or take, for a single charge. One thing that is important to note is that the creators claim this is not a toy at all. As mentioned earlier, not long in the future, we’ll see a full-scale, fully functioning real-life Transformer robot.
