Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren voc Obam, And if science fiction has taught
Speaker 1: us anything, it's that giant piloted robotic humanoids will eventually
Speaker 1: be essential to the protection of everything we hold Dear
Speaker 1: invading Kaiju from another dimension. Send in the yagers Row
Speaker 1: beasts from Planet Doom, better assemble Vultron, And, as James
Speaker 1: Cameron's Aliens taught us in six even a non combat
Speaker 1: nex suit can make all the difference against an extra
Speaker 1: terrestrial threat. Another influential example is our X seventy eight
Speaker 1: Dash to Gundam. The titular piloted giant robot entered the
Speaker 1: world in nineteen seventy nine as part of Yoshiyuki Tomino's
Speaker 1: mobile suit Gundam franchise, which remains popular today. But could
Speaker 1: we build our own gun Dams? The simple answer is yes.
Speaker 1: In fact, scientists have been tackling various aspects of the
Speaker 1: technology since at least the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Speaker 1: During that time, both Russian and American inventors it explored
Speaker 1: the possibility of mechanically enhanced exo skeletons to aid humans
Speaker 1: in various physical movements. Since that time, we've continued to
Speaker 1: see exo skeleton advancements aimed at injury rehabilitation, space travel,
Speaker 1: industrial labor, and yes, even military combat and okay, power
Speaker 1: armor is nice and all, but it's hardly a giant
Speaker 1: robot that stomps around and punches monsters in the face.
Speaker 1: What about true towering Mecca's 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 of
Speaker 1: our various global combat zones, and space exploration probes have
Speaker 1: delivered wheeled rovers to other worlds. We've even given our
Speaker 1: wheeled robots arms for tasks from bomb dispersal to Martian
Speaker 1: soil sampling and deep sea exploration. But none of these
Speaker 1: mechanical minions boasts legs. Even the humanoid roboknot developed by
Speaker 1: NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson's Space Center didn't acquire climbing legs
Speaker 1: until its second iteration. For proper Gundams to one day
Speaker 1: walk the planet will need proper robot legs, and this
Speaker 1: too has featured into the work of various robotics programs.
Speaker 1: The most famous of these is Boston Dynamics, military funded
Speaker 1: walker programs such as Big Dog and Cheetah, and not
Speaker 1: just because they inspired the killer robots in the Black
Speaker 1: Mirror episode Metal Head. Because while aerial and nautical robots
Speaker 1: can get by just fine without a leg to stand on,
Speaker 1: terrestrial robots are a different matter. Wheels are great on
Speaker 1: the road and unobstructed landscapes, but legs provide the most
Speaker 1: versatility for diverse environments. True wheel like structures only rarely
Speaker 1: occur in biology, such as the bacterial flagellum, a structure
Speaker 1: found in such species as the Bacterium equali. Legs, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, are natural selections primary solution to terrestrial transportation,
Speaker 1: so it makes sense to copy evolution in this regard,
Speaker 1: and biommetic engineers have looked to all manner of leg
Speaker 1: rangements for inspiration, from humans to millipedes. But here's the catch.
Speaker 1: Led movement requires a great deal of programming, complexity and power.
Speaker 1: It may feel easy for most of us, but our
Speaker 1: minds and bodies are highly evolved for the task. Even
Speaker 1: a fully piloted gundam, say one word's movements are mapped
Speaker 1: on those of the pilot. Would require a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of biometic engineering, and semi autonomous units would require the
Speaker 1: dexterity and spatial awareness to avoid the pitfalls of for example,
Speaker 1: the e D two oh nine in RoboCup, which stomped
Speaker 1: around on two feet but was incapable of navigating stairs.
Speaker 1: But the Mecca dream is strong. While various robotics companies
Speaker 1: continue to develop the necessary technology, sci fi fans also
Speaker 1: go at it alone. Functional MECA suites have strolled the
Speaker 1: Plaia at Burning Man and paraded at various conventions, and
Speaker 1: Japanese engineer Masaki Nagumo built a working life size model
Speaker 1: of a Gundam in the Mecca, dubbed l W Mononofu
Speaker 1: stands twenty eight feet hall that's about eight point five
Speaker 1: meters and ways 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: mecca's out for a little under a thousand bucks an hour.
Speaker 1: It's not protecting the world from alien attacks, but it's
Speaker 1: quite a hit for kid's birthday parties. Though one note
Speaker 1: here if aliens or giant monsters do attack well, Mecca's
Speaker 1: might not be the best option anyway. As was pointed
Speaker 1: out in the magazine Popular Mechanics, the yagers from the
Speaker 1: Pacific Rim films are entirely outclassed by existing aerial bombers
Speaker 1: and attack helicopters. Today's episode was written by Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: and produced by Tyler Clang. It was also suggested to
Speaker 1: us by Lucas, twelve years of age from Ontario, Canada. Lucas,
Speaker 1: we hope that answer was satisfactory, nay, exemplary listeners. If
Speaker 1: you have a question you'd like us to answer, send
Speaker 1: it to us. You can email us at brain stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, or find us on
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Speaker 1: And of course we more on this and lots of
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