Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vocal Bomb, and today I've got another classic
Speaker 1: episode for you. In this one, we talk robots, the
Speaker 1: fun kind, the kind perhaps you think of when you
Speaker 1: hear the word robots, despite the fact that you're way
Speaker 1: more likely to encounter, say, a robotic dishwasher in real life.
Speaker 1: Up large Gundam type mechas. Could we create them in
Speaker 1: real life? Hey brain Stuff, I'm Lauren Vocal Bomb. And
Speaker 1: if science fiction has taught us anything, it's that giant
Speaker 1: piloted robotic humanoids will eventually be essential to the protection
Speaker 1: of everything we hold Dear invading kaiju from another dimension
Speaker 1: send in the aggres ro beasts from Planet Doom better
Speaker 1: assemble Vultron, And, as James Cameron's Aliens taught us in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six, even a non combat next suit can
Speaker 1: make all the difference against an extraterrestrial threat. Another influential
Speaker 1: example is our ex seventy eight Dash Too. Gundom, the
Speaker 1: titular piloted giant robot, entered the world in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine as part of Yoshiyuki Tomino's mobile suit. Gundam franchise,
Speaker 1: which remains popular today. But could we build our own gundoms?
Speaker 1: The simple answer is yes. In fact, scientists have been
Speaker 1: tackling various aspects of the technology since at least the
Speaker 1: late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During that time, both
Speaker 1: Russian and American inventors explored the possibility of mechanically enhanced
Speaker 1: exoskeletons to aid humans in various physical movements. Since that time,
Speaker 1: we've continued to see exoskeleton advancements aimed at injury rehabilitation,
Speaker 1: space travel, industrial labor, and yes, even military combat and okay,
Speaker 1: power armour is nice and all, but it's hardly a
Speaker 1: giant robot that stomps around and punches monsters in the face.
Speaker 1: What about true towering mechas well? The answer here is
Speaker 1: also a yes. Within the field of robotics, we've seen
Speaker 1: tremendous achievements in the creation of remote control, autonomous and
Speaker 1: semi autonomous machines. Today, military drones haunt the skies over
Speaker 1: various global combat zones, and space exploration probes have delivered
Speaker 1: wheeled rovers to other worlds. We've even given our wheeled
Speaker 1: robots arms for tasks from bomb dispersal to Martian soil
Speaker 1: sampling and deep sea exploration, but none of these mechanical
Speaker 1: minions boasts legs. Even the humanoid robot developed by NASA's
Speaker 1: Lyndon B. Johnston Space Center didn't acquire climbing legs until
Speaker 1: its second iteration four proper gundams. To one day walk
Speaker 1: the planet will need proper robot legs, and this too
Speaker 1: has featured into the work of various robotics programs. The
Speaker 1: most famous of these is Boston Dynamics, military funded walker
Speaker 1: programs such as Big Dog and Cheetah, and not just
Speaker 1: because they inspired the killer robots in the Black Mirror
Speaker 1: episode Metalhead, because while aerial and nautical robots can get
Speaker 1: by just fying without a leg to stand on, terrestrial
Speaker 1: robots are a different matter. Wheels are great on the
Speaker 1: road and unobstructed landscapes, but legs provide the most versatility
Speaker 1: for diverse environments. True wheelike structures only rarely occur in biology,
Speaker 1: such as the bacterial flagellum, a structure found in such
Speaker 1: species as the Bacterium ecoli. Legs, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: are natural selections primary solution to terrestrial transportation, so it
Speaker 1: makes sense to copy evolution in this regard, and biomimetic
Speaker 1: engineers have looked to all manner of legagements for inspiration,
Speaker 1: from humans to millipedes. But here's the catch. Legged movement
Speaker 1: requires a great deal of programming, complexity and power. It
Speaker 1: may feel easy for most of us, but our minds
Speaker 1: and bodies are highly evolved for the task. Even a
Speaker 1: fully piloted gundam, say one where its movements are mapped
Speaker 1: on those of the pilot, would require a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of biomedic engineering, and semi autonomous units would require the
Speaker 1: dexterity and spatial awareness to avoid the pitfalls of for example,
Speaker 1: the ED two nine in RoboCop, which stopped around on
Speaker 1: two feet but was incapable of navigating s stairs. But
Speaker 1: the mecha dream is strong. While various robotics companies continue
Speaker 1: to develop the necessary technology, sci fi fans also go
Speaker 1: at it alone. Functional mechasuits have strolled the Plaia at
Speaker 1: Burning Man and paraded at various conventions, and Japanese engineer
Speaker 1: Masaki Nagumo built a working, life size model of a
Speaker 1: Gundam in twenty eighteen. The mecca, dubbed l W MONONOFU
Speaker 1: stands twenty eight feet tall that's about eight point five
Speaker 1: meters and weighs seven point seven tons or about seven
Speaker 1: metric tons. It's too big to leave the factory space
Speaker 1: that it calls home, but Nagobo rents it and other
Speaker 1: meccas out for a little under one thousand bucks an hour.
Speaker 1: It's not protecting the world from alien attacks, but it's
Speaker 1: quite a hit for kids' birthday parties. Though one note
Speaker 1: here if aliens or giant monsters do attack, well, meccas
Speaker 1: might not be the best option anyway. As was pointed
Speaker 1: out in the magazine Popular Mechanics, the Jaggers from the
Speaker 1: Pacific Rim films are entirely outclassed by existing aerial bombers
Speaker 1: and attack helicopters. Today's episode is based on the article
Speaker 1: could we build our own gun dams? On how Stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot com written by Robert Lamb, with special thanks to
Speaker 1: twelve year old Lucas from Ontario for sending in the question.
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how
Speaker 1: stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four
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