The Brave Robotics engineers have created a real-life Transformer that can even carry people inside.
“J-deite RIDE” was created by Brave Robotics, partnered with SoftBank affiliate Astratec. It has 49 separate joints and can travel at about 40 miles per hour on its lithium battery. It is comparatively sluggish when in its standing upright configuration, able to travel about one hundred yards in the same amount of time.
Brave Robotics Chief Executive Officer Kenji Ishida was one of the primary proponents of the project, which he says was inspired by his childhood love of anime.
“The robots I’ve seen in animation movies since childhood all had this kind of look and they transform into or combined with each other to become something else with people on board,” Ishida said. “So I grew up believing that robots had to be capable of such things, which became my motivation to develop this robot.”
While J-deite RIDE may seem like little more than an extravagant toy, its creators hope that it will serve to inspire others in the future of robotics development and broaden the scope of imaginative human innovation.