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Science writer George van Hal discusses the desirable inventions of sci-fi movies and series and finds out if they can become reality. Today: robots that can transform into vehicles, and vice versa. How close are we?
What is it about?
Robots that can transform into cars, planes or sometimes even mechanical dinosaurs.
Where seen?
In modern 80s cartoon and movie series Transformers featuring giant robots that can transform into all kinds of vehicles.
How close are we?
The robots in Transformers are not created by man, but aliens from the distant planet Cybertron. And while you can never completely rule out the possibility of extraterrestrial life resembling giant toy robots, the odds are so low that we don’t have to speculate about it any further.
But if we put aside the extraterrestrial and self-awareness for a moment, is what you’re left with even possible? Can you build robots that transform into vehicles? The lame answer is: they already exist. The cartoon was sort of a long advertisement for the toy of the same name. In the 1980s, all you had to do was walk into the nearest toy store and find an Optimus Prime, a toy robot that turns into a truck.
The main question is therefore: can it go even further? The answer is yes to that too. For example, a group of Japanese engineers and scientists working together as “Project J-deite” started with a scale model – a quarter of the movie size – of the Transformer character Bumblebee, which could actually be transform into a car that actually drives. And they presented the successor, code name: J-deite Ride, which is 4 meters tall and can do the same.
And there are more. The Humvee bioloid for example, developed by an engineer from the American university Virgina Tech, which can transform from a Humvee into a robot and then do another dance. And then the same group also developed earlier this year a so-called “soft drone”, which can change shape thanks to a metal alloy that becomes liquid when heated to 60 degrees. In this way, it transforms from a land vehicle to an air vehicle, and even a rudimentary submarine, the research group wrote earlier this year. in the trade magazine Scientific robotics†
to be so interesting M-blocks developed by the American university MIT. They are mini robots in the shape of blocks that recognize each other, can cling to each other and thus take on different shapes. And although it is of course not so easy to make a car from separate blocks, anyone who has ever played with Lego knows: it is possible.
If you ultimately prefer something that already transforms into a real car, you can always contact the Turkish company Letrons in addition to the Japanese and American autobots. They built ‘Antimon’, a real BMW-3 series car that can turn into a robot in half a minute. And vice versa, of course.
Very impressive, but unfortunately still not very ‘Transformers’. For example, you cannot drive the car yourself, although you can control it remotely. It just doesn’t go very fast: you can’t go over 20 kilometers per hour. And oh yes: in robot form, unlike the cartoon combat robots, unfortunately he can’t walk either. Let alone fly or fire big laser guns with megalomaniacs.
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