Japan's 60-Foot-Tall Gundam Robot Is Now Walking and Wreaking Havoc

From Popular Mechanics

• Giant Gundam Yokohama, the world's largest robot to date, is near completion.

• Now in testing mode, the robot is walking, kneeling, making hand gestures, and more.

• Originally, the Gundam experience was supposed to debut on October 1, but the creators have since pushed back the opening date due to COVID-19.

The world's largest robot—a giant Gundam that towers 60 feet above Japan's Port of Yokohama—has been under construction since January. Now, the beastly bot is finally ready to stretch its legs.

🤖You like badass robots. So do we. Let's nerd out over them together.

Inspired by the fictional Japanese robot of the same name—which has appeared in over 50 TV series and movies since 1979, as well as many manga comics and video games—this Gundam features a staggering 24 degrees of freedom. That means the robot can pick up its legs to walk, bend its knees, turn its head, and contort its fingers to mime hand signals.

People in Japan have caught and shared a few glimpses of the engineering marvel. Considering the Gundam weighs about 25 tons, it's pretty insane to watch it raise both arms in the air and pick itself back up after kneeling.

Those efficiencies are thanks to precise engineering and design work, as outlined in a series of YouTube videos from Gundam Factory Yokohama. In one installment, the engineers give a tour of where they designed, built, and assembled the Gundam. The videos are a great way to really contextualize the size of this monster; from the metal fingertip to where the wrist will connect, for example, the hand is about 6.5 feet wide.

This iteration of Gundam is the RX-78-2, a manned robot first seen in the 1979 anime series Mobile Suit Gundam. Yoshiyuki Tomino, the creator of the series and the "Father of Gundam," is the general director for the giant Gundam project.

While the Gundam team had to cancel a special event over the summer and postpone the grand opening originally slated for October 1, the construction process hasn't been delayed. In the new footage, workers in forklifts attend to the robot's appendages and head, but by all accounts, it looks like Gundam is prepared for launch.

It's not clear when the exhibit will officially open, but the Gundam Factory Yokohama website does note it will be "within the year." Is the world ready?

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