chaosrunner, you especially would love this.)bluekitsune pointed this out to me, and LandWalker 2005 looks pretty darn neat, for anyone who's a Gundam or Patlabor fan, as I used to be pretty heavily as a kid. (Living in Japan, with a foster-brother in my host family who was a complete mecha nut, infected me.)But. Uhm. Going through the rest of the Sakakibara Kikai site, I admit to being slightly bewildered. The majority of their products are farming robots -- robots for baling hay, mixing and distributing feed to cattle, and so on -- and a few things like intelligent heating/cooling systems. There /is/ a cute little 'intelligent robot' and an autonomous sentry, but... Not that I'm complaining that they've decided to get into recreational combat mecha, just a bit surprised.
For those curious (and unable to read Japanese), a somewhat hasty loose translation from skimming the page says:
Even though you're grown-up now, ever since you were little you've wanted to pilot a robot. We, too, have wanted to be mecha pilots, and now we've made REAL NATURAL BODY MOVEMENT ROBOT "LAND WALKER"!
(Link to Discussion BBS)
With computer-control aiding balance the robot can presently move forward and backward, and turn left and right, controlled by four foot pedals. Guns are aimed and fired with hand-operated joysticks. And this is just the basic early functionality! Though only the development machine presently exists, when the actual ones are complete, you will be able to play a 'robot opposition combat' game!
DATA
Height: 3m 40cm
Weight: 1000kg
Capacity: 1 pilot
Engine power: 250cc
Speed: 1.5km/h 'drift' speed in two-foot-walking
Armament: 2 'air cushion ball' guns
Right gun: 'Balkan' type gun (6 shots)
Left gun: single shot gun type (6 shots)
Cockpit monitor system for external cameras.
The little pink squeezy thing is the current 'ammunition' the LandWalker uses.
To quote one of the posters on the BBS... "Sugooooooiiiiii~!" (COOL!)
