Unitree Unveils: GD01, A Manned Transformable Mecha

Sci-fi depictions of larger robots are fairly common, but we haven’t seen too many examples yet in the real world. Some applications people have thought of before have simply been scaled up humanoid frames for moving large objects with the dexterity of a human. Like lifting objects into place. This seems early, but it’s interesting nonetheless to see companies already investigating with larger frames and human control systems.

I like this Japanese one better https://preview.redd.it/8q7cvld6vn0h1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d6ff075da62d3e5dbef3446b03c1cac8faeb812e

Was the part of the video that showed a person inside the mecha while it was moving, really showing a person?

Between the helmet and the lack of movement of any arms etc, it looked like it may have been just a dummy.

You never see it move even a tiny bit with an actual human visible near it. You have to wonder how many takes it took before they got one without it falling over.

This appears to be quite far from being useable either way.

The cockpit should rotate as the robot “transforms” from 2 to 4 legged.

There should also be some steps to make it less awkward to climb into it.

The hands don’t look like they actually open up.

Sadly, we are not yet at the level of Patlabor.

That’s straight up a dummy. You can tell by the way it is.

I love mecha since I’m a fan of Gundam and another mecha anime alike, but as much as I want a manned bipedal giant robot to become a thing, unfotunately they’re just doesn’t make any sense in real life. The structural rigidity and integrity needed for it not collapsing on itself may requires some exotic materials that doesn’t exist yet. Even the example from this demonstration is pretty much a bare exoskeleton with without any outer shell. This demo unit is only roughly 3 or 4 meter tall, pretty small for the typical giant mecha depiction from anime, which is on the average 18-20 meter, but even on smaller size it needs a serious weight reduction for it to be able to stand and carrying people without trouble. I doubt this Unitree mecha can do anything useful beside carrying a single grown adult, let alone carrying heavier payload like construction material and maybe heavy weaponry.

This looks like the North Korean exosuit in Iron Man 2. I think I say a Iron Man suit there, I guess as a homage.