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Robotics

The Transformer You’ve Always Dreamed Of Is Here

Peter Murray
Jun 13, 2012

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A second ago that robot was a slick Lamborghini.

Man, where the heck was this when I was a kid? The Transformers I played with were die cast metal figurines that I posed, providing the “err-arr-errnght!” transforming sounds myself. Now there’s an RC robot that transforms from its Lamborghini-esque form into a robot, throws a few punches in the (you'll imagine) Deceptacons’ direction, walks, and can even form a victory dance because it has been crowned most awesomest toy ever.

And you can drive it around too because, you know, it’s an RC.

The RC Transformer was developed by Kenji Ishida of JS Robotics. Apparently this is the eighth version of the robot that he’s been building in his living room, according to Herald Sun. Sorry to disappoint, but the robot’s not commercially available just yet. Ishida is already working on version nine, but hopefully he realizes soon that he’s already fulfilled our wildest Transformer fantasies (Megan Fox considerations aside). And technical details are scarce too, amounting to the single fact that it has 22 servos.

Ishida had originally planned on building a robot to enter into “robotic slugfests,” which I’m guessing would be ROBO-ONE. From what I’ve seen the tourney is more about Rock Em’ Sock Em’ boxing. Not sure, but it might be cheating to transform into a sweet red Lamborghini and run robotic chumps over.

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Peter Murray was born in Boston in 1973. He earned a PhD in neuroscience at the University of Maryland, Baltimore studying gene expression in the neocortex. Following his dissertation work he spent three years as a post-doctoral fellow at the same university studying brain mechanisms of pain and motor control. He completed a collection of short stories in 2010 and has been writing for Singularity Hub since March 2011.

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