At the MARS 2017 tech conference, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos hopped into Hankook Mirae Technology’s massive mechanized suit.
Bezos asked aloud why he “felt so much like Sigourney Weaver” in reference to Weaver’s character Ripley piloting a mechanized suit in Aliens as he manipulated the giant metal arms for an enthusiastic crowd on Sunday.
The “Method-2” mecha was created by South Korea’s Hankook Mirae Technology. It stands at a hulking 14 feet tall, and weighs 1.6 tons at a minimum, according to their minimalist website. Visually, it most resembles the mechanized suits from James Cameron’s fluorescent blue cat lady epic, Avatar.
The massive suit was designed in part by Vitaly Bulgarov, who worked with Boston Dynamics on their own bipedal robots. Bulgarov also signed on with Industrial Light & Magic to help with designs for Michael Bay’s Transformers reboot.
Hankook Mirae Chairman Yang Jin-Ho called the Method-2 “the world’s first manned bipedal robot,” saying that it was “built to work in extreme hazardous areas where humans cannot go [unprotected].” He added that they are taking “baby steps” to a point where they can allow the mech to “move freely.”
The Method-2 is expected to be commercially available by the end of 2017, and will only set you back a cool $8.3 million. It might sound like a lot, but there is no cost too great in the inevitable lunar battle against Mecha-Bezos and the flying robot army pouring from his weird super-blimps.
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