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Watch Korea's Real Gundam Take Its First Steps With A Human Pilot

A mech to believe in

By Kat Bauman - January 5, 2017

in Tech | Social Impact | Cars

It's a little hard to believe at first sight, but Korea's Hankook Mirae Technology company has released video of their human piloted mech walking. It's called the Method-2, and the 13 foot 1.3 ton machine looks like something CG plucked out of a movie. Though untrue, this isn't terribly wrong, since its lead designer, Vitaly Bulgarov, has a professional background in SFX.

The Method-2 is being conceived of as an option for emergency response in dangerous conditions, but it'll need a better power pack before it gets unleashed. In the meantime, it's already handling well upright, both in forward and backward modes, and its arms function well too.

Here's the first video of the mega mech walking, posted to Facebook by Bulgarov.

IS THIS THE REAL LIFE

In this video Bulgarov himself enters and pilots the arms:

IS THIS JUST FANTASYYY

At this point, it sounds like the team's short term plan is to modify a legless version for faster response time in industrial settings. That sounds wise, but now that I've seen this awesome walker in action, I'll be sitting on my (puny flesh) hands until we see more of it.

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Sam Alder

7 years ago

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This is not real. The workers are far too close to the robot. Anyone with experience working on large robots knows the control algorithms can fail catastrophically during testing, and all robots of this size and weight are operated in a human exclusion zone.

There are lots of other clues that this is very fake.

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Scott Brown

7 years ago

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1980s teenage me is freaking out, because BattleTech and Robotech!

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