Fire-Breathing Dragon Robot Breaks Records And Takes Names
This article is more than 2 years old
Can I just write the words “holy shit!” and let the picture speak for itself?
No?
Well, then let me take a minute to bow to the greatness of this robot beast. If Daenerys Targaryen’s dragons turn out like this, she’s set forever. Right now, this one makes them look cute and cuddly. I’m also pretty sure this robot would scare the crap out of DARPA’s Atlas robot.
The giant mecha named Tradinno (part tradition, part innovation) is 30 feet tall, 51 feet long, and weighs 11 tons Yeah, that’s like six of me put together. If I’m not riding the thing through the skies, I’m probably going to hide behind a mountain and hope it doesn’t decide to torch me. And Tradinno is decorated — it recently won the Guinness world record for largest walking robot. It goes without saying, then, that it’s the largest fire-breathing robot too, which is a class all its own.
The robot was built by Zollner Electronics, a German mechatronics company that specializes in making scary, awesome stuff. Sure, they do repairs and engineering and blahblahblah…does anyone really care what else they do?
Tradinno’s development team consists of 15 mechanical and electrical engineers and software developers. Tradinno is remote-controlled and is capable of walking outdoors on its four legs. It’s powered by a 2.0-liter turbo diesel engine and has two hydraulic circuits, 272 hydraulic valves, 65 animated axles, 238 sensors, and 1300 meters of electrical cables. It has nine modular control units, each of which contains two processors. Can you imagine hooking this thing up? I sometimes struggle to connect my computer, printer, external hard drive, and all the other pieces. I hope they have a good cord organizer.
Connecting all the wires, drives, and sensors isn’t the only challenge Tradinno’s team faced. They also had to figure out how to make this thing walk. But they did it — each leg has seven degrees of freedom, which allows Tradinno to round corners and move sideways. In fact, their design is so revolutionary that they’ve applied for a patent for the concept and the walk algorithm. It’s also an all-wheel drive vehicle, so when it gets tired of walking, it’s got back-up transportation.
Tradinno’s a star — literally. It just finished playing the lead role in a traditional German folk play called “Drachenstich.” That’s where the 21 gallons of fake blood coursing through its veins and the 24 pounds of flammable liquid gas come in handy. It should totally tour with the Robotic Church orchestra. I’m already their first groupie.
