Method-2 – Enormous Robot
The founder and CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos was said to be piloting the enormous robot prototype at the MARS conference of the company in Palm Springs and Method-2 seemed to be an appropriate symbol for the event.
MAR tends to stand for Machine-learning, home Automation, Robotics and Space exploration. Placed at four metres tall, the cockpit of Method-2, retained in its torso is said to accommodate only one person. The hands of the pilot are connected to two mechanical levers which incline to transfer movement to its big aluminium hands.
Contrasting to the character Ripley of Weaver who takes on a Xenomorph in Aliens, Bezos does not seem to be intend on destruction. What seems to appear as a billionaire’s party prank became the outcome of a research project that had started in 2014 when Vitaly Bulgarov, an industrial designer, received mysterious inquiry.
Bulgarov had worked for the film and games industries for the earlier 12 years and had created designs and characters for Robocop, Transformers and World of Warcraft. However this task seemed to be different.
The CEO of the South Korean firm Hankook Mirae Technology, Jin-Ho Yang, had got in touch with Bulgarov with a request. He wanted to create something which would be possible in films and comics and the result is up and running, three years later.
Method-2 First Manned Bipedal Robot
Method-2 taken by Bezos on a wild test run was not just a robot. Its designer had informed that the first manned bipedal robot has the potential of moving 1.5 tonnes while synchronously translating the movements of its pilot. If the passenger tends to lift up an arm, Method-2 is also said to lift an air and the only difference is that the latter’s arm seems to weight 148 kg.
It has fingers which are around 30 centimetres long. When Method-2 seems to appear in public, it creates a mixture of eagerness, amusement and scepticism. Regardless of the robot’s advanced engineering that Hankook Mirae Technology had designed internally and Method-2 is said to walk like a drunken Goliath.
The robot hence stays suspended from two steel cables just like a toddler held back in the safety reins of its parent while learning to walk. This however is likely to change and the company intends to install a new high-performance battery which will enable Method-2 to walk around for up to three hours at a stretch.
Usage of Method-2 In Hazardous Environments
Unfortunately, it would not improve on its gait which seems to be a problem of weight distribution. Method-2 will not be able to silence the feet which tend to make the ground shake as they hit the floor. As for Jin-Ho, there seems to be no more beautiful sound. As a boy, he had dreamt of constructing robots.
He has invested about SKW242 billion (166m) in his company that had set up precisely to improve Method-2. Towards the end of 2017 he expects to start selling the robot to consumers for usage in hazardous environments like nuclear ruins of Fukushima.
His engineers have already started working on radiation protection. Jin-Ho had stated that individual components established in the creation of Method-2 can also be on their own; with industrial application.
