Watch Engineers Take Their 60-Foot-Tall Gundam for a Walk
On October 1, 2020, Gundam Factory Yokohama will debut a 60-foot tall humanoid robot.
A YouTube video, posted earlier this month, shows the progress.
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, it looks like construction on the robot is still on schedule.
Since January, construction has been underway on a huge Gundam robot—a popular fictional robot that appears in some 50 TV series and movies since 1979, not to mention a slew of video games and manga. Coming in at about 60 feet tall, the Gundam will be impossible to miss from the Port of Yokohama, just south of Tokyo, where it will call home for a full year.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has halted progress on various construction projects, worldwide, the Gundam perseveres. You can check out the progress for yourself in this YouTube video, uploaded by Michael Overstreet.
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In the video, you can observe workers touching up the robot on a crane as the giant Gundam picks up and puts down its legs and rotates its massive torso. From the looks of it, the only thing that's missing at the moment is the head.
Once finished, the robot will feature an incredible 24 degrees of freedom, meaning this thing will be able to walk. When everything is said and done, the whole thing will weigh in at about 25 tons, and that's actually pretty lightweight, considering how heavy it could have been.
Those weight efficiencies are thanks to careful engineering and design work, as outlined in a series of YouTube videos from Gundam Factory Yokohama. In one installment, we get a tour of where the workers designed, built, and assembled Gundam. From the metal fingertip to where the wrist will connect, the hand is about 6.5 feet.
Jun Narita, head of design, explains that special considerations about the types of material and motors had been taken into account because otherwise one hand could weigh as much as 1,300 pounds.
"This weight restriction is like a curse," he says.
Gundam Factory Yokohama has updated its website to note that the special preview event, which was supposed to take place this month, has been cancelled due to COVID-19 concerns.
But thanks to the internet, fans near and far get a chance to see a real-life Gundam take one of its first steps.
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