Although you may never get to have the Boston accent of Mark Wahlberg or a robot butler like Anthony Hopkins, you may get to one day sit in your own Transformer.
A group of Japanese roboticists have created the J-deite Ride, a 12-foot tall humanoid robot that transforms into a working car, much like Bumblebee, Jazz, or the leader of the Autobots, Optimus Prime.
The group, comprised of engineers from Brave Robotics, SoftBank subsidiary Asratec, and Sansei Technologies, unveiled the robot today, April 26. It’ll be displayed in Japan next week, and at an amusement park trade show in Florida in December. The group plans to commercialize its model for theme parks, according to a release, a
Unfortunately, this robot does not transform as rapidly as the ones in the movies. A lot of dramatic tension would probably have been lost with these bots in Michael Bay’s movies. Still, it’s easy to see how popular driving around an amusement park in a working Transformer could be.
But for now, we just have to stick to the seemingly never-ending Transformers movie franchise.