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