Have you ever had nightmare of robot on motorcycle chasing after you? Well, not to worry, this humanoid won’t do such nasty stuff, at least not until Google changes its name to Skynet. What you see here is Motobot Ver. 1, or otherwise known in its more lengthy form as the Autonomous Motorcycle-riding Humanoid Robot Concept. Conceived by Japanese motorcycle manufacturer Yamaha is a humanoid that has one job and that’s to mimic human riding a bike – complete with the requisite articulation and dexterity for twisting the throttle, depressing the clutch lever, shifting through the gears of the shift lever and stuff.
Motobot is pretty much like a person, except that it won’t be able to put down his leg to hold the bike up when it stops and it certainly won’t dismount and walk away like we all can. As the version number indicated, this is the first (and certainly won’t be the last) and it does require some help to get started. It can go too fast, averaging 100 kilometers an hour (62 mph) and needed training wheels as a safety to prevent it from collapsing on turns. Here are the official words:
“This is an autonomous motorcycle-riding humanoid robot built around a fusion of Yamaha’s motorcycle and robotics technology. R&D is currently underway with the goal of developing the robot to ride an unmodified motorcycle on a racetrack at more than 200 km/h. The task of controlling the complex motions of a motorcycle at high speeds requires a variety of control systems that must function with a high degree of accuracy. We want to apply the fundamental technology and know-how gained in the process of this challenge to the creation of advanced rider safety and rider-support systems and put them to use in our current businesses, as well as using them to pioneer new lines of business.”
Yamaha surely didn’t give life to Motobot to compete in MotoGP, but it will be interesting to see the final version of Motobot going head-to-head with MotoGP’s bests. You know, a sort of man-vs-machine scenario, which will not yield productive result, but mostly for our entertainment and satisfy the ‘because we can’ attitude. Anyways, enjoy the video as ‘narrated’ by the machine itself.
