Japanese Political Party to Hold Panel on Developing Real Gundam

[Bells]

The Liberal Democratic Party, a center-right faction in Japanese politics, will hold a live, 12-hour marathon stream on the niconico service on Thursday, and one of the marathon's panels will discuss "the Gundam Development Project, as seriously considered by the Liberal Democratic Party."
Masaaki Taira and Hideki Niwa, two members of Japan's House of Representatives, will speak during the 8:00 p.m. panel with their guest, novelist Harutoshi Fukui. Fukui happens to be the writer of the Mobile Suit Gundam UC novels (pictured below right).
Taira reported last year that his party would consider adding the efforts to realize "piloted, two-legged walking humanoid robots" into the party's platform manifesto. Taira also posted an extended discussion about the feasibility of piloted walking robots on Twitter, using the anime and manga titles Gundam, Appleseed, and Patlabor (pictured left) as examples. Taira broached the topic after meeting with Katsuya Kanaoka, a professor of robotics from Kyoto University.
In 2008, SciencePortal.jp, a website run by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), released a report estimating how much it would cost to build a 18-meter-tall (59-feet-tall), functioning "Morph-X" combat robot similar to those used in Gundam. The Japanese government funds about 90% of JST's budget, with the remaining coming from the agency's own operational income

The Technical Research and Development Institute in Japan's Ministry of Defense included a ground equipment exhibit titled "Towards the Realization of Gundam (Advanced Personal Equipment System)" in a defense technology symposium in October of 2007. Earlier that very same month, Japan's Ministry of Agriculture reprimanded six of its employees for editing the Japanese Wikipedia encyclopedia article on Gundam during work hours; a spokesperson explained that the "Ministry of Agriculture is not in charge of Gundam."

SciencePortal.jp, a website run by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), has released a report estimating how much it would cost to build a 18-meter-tall (59-feet-tall), functioning "Morph-X" combat robot similar to those used in the Gundam anime franchise. The estimate assumes that the robot would only have the ability to walk, not fly, and that it would not be equipped with any weaponry. The Japanese government funds about 90% of JST's budget, with the remaining coming from the agency's own operational income.

As translated by the PinkTentacle.com website, the report assumes that the robot would use an IBM Blue Gene supercomputer, seven General Electric gas turbine engines (the same engines used in the US$52-million Apache attack helicopters), and 30 400-kilowatt motors (12 in the lower body, 2 in the torso, 14 in the arms, and 2 in the neck). Instead of the fictional Gundarium alloy used in the anime, it would be covered in an aluminum alloy. The report calculates the total cost of the Gundam at 79 billion, 521 million yen (about US$729,700,000). This compares to a price tag of US$187 million for one of the U.S. Air Force's F-22 fighters, US$800 million for an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer (operated by the U.S. and Japanese navies), or US$2.2 billion for a single B-2 bomber.

The report further points out that a Gundam-sized robot would be 9.5 times taller than an average human, but take up 850 times more volume. Not only would it weigh 43.4 tons according to the fictional anime statistics, but it would apply 1.2 to 1.4 times that weight in ground pressure when it walks or runs. Unless it was shaped like a pyramid, it would sink into almost any ground that would normally support a human. Instead, JST puts forth a more viable multi-legged design called the Hallucigenia 01, and streams a demonstration video of this design.

Nerd Mode On: This is ridiculous on the point that in the Gundam Universe, the Gundam Mobile suit was only a viable choice due to the discovery of the new Minovsky Particles that disrupted and blocked all sorts of guided weaponry and remote controlled warfare and radar systems at long range which forced the development of closed ranged warfare and eventually the Individually piloted all purpose mobile suits.

On the other side, the fact that a big national party on the mother nation of eletronics and technology on this earth are actually considering discussing the construction of a industry around giant robots is fucking awesome!

[Kyanbu The Legend]

And this is why Japan is awesome. It may not happen due to the sear amount of resources needed but its still cool that they are considering it.

[Aldurin]

Dammit Japan.

[Bells]

well that's the funny thing... the costs are actually feasible (at first glance) when compared to other military tech we have around, when you consider that this is supposed to be cutting edge and never done before... and when you think the advancements we got from Military tech development that serves everyday life, i can only wonder what we could get out of the Engineering and Eletronical fronts with something like this getting done...

But it's just not practical. It can be taken down by a well placed landime, it's going to be at best as fast as a tank, but 10 times easier to hit... the sheer weight sets that it can't be used on anything less than rocky grounds and the Hydraulics almost guarantees that it's the type of equipment that Destroys itself during heavy use.

Unless they just want to make GunTanks.



Other than that, going Bipedal on gravity is not a good design...

Now, if they were planning to develop "manned mobile suit opertional vehicles" to use in outer space, i could somewhat understand that.

You take the center block of a Mobile suit (the torso) and what you have there is pretty much a tiny 1 man self-powered starship, the head unit is a collection of sensors and cameras, and now you have attachments for limbs... legs can even be usable to land on uneven terrain on asteroids and moons or walk outside a colony or station... whatever you need. At least that serves some logical purpose...

[Kyanbu The Legend]

That's what I was thinking. This project could have a future in space exploration and mining missions.

[RobinStarwing]

Bells, can you post a link to the source article(s) itself? I would like to put this up on my Facebook.

But yeah...HOLY F--KING CRAP!!! Japan is nuts! Gotta love them! I would of went with a more Battletech/Mechwarrior or Armored Core design myself.

[Bells]

you got it

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news...ng-real-gundam

[RobinStarwing]

Originally Posted by Bells

you got it

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news...ng-real-gundam

Thanks, one of my friends said it might be amusing to see one of these toppled by a $100 shell shot at a knee joint.

Arrow to knee?

More serious note: What kind of weaponry will these carry? Built in systems or something that can be carried and hence a more modular kind of attack system? If the latter, ammo will be a problem for sure.

[Sifright]

There is literally no conceivable place that mechs could function in reality for war, it's great for fiction and gaming because you can ignore objective reality. The only worthwhile thing that will possibly come of this is improvements in robotics.(Edit and really robotics really needs better miniaturization not something that is applicable here)


As for using mechs for spacecraft again it's a poor option, the humanoid form is not fit for purpose in space. What possible purpose would legs have in space for instance.

It's basically a very very expensive toy. given that pretty much anything is more cost effective. For that kind price you could have a battalion of tanks which would also have the benefit of being harder to hit and better able to deal with difficult terrain.

[Bells]

legs are usable to some extent. The most effective mechanical designs do use "Legs" as their framework, just not on Bipedal form. Usually taking more of a "Spider" form or quadruped.

Legs are very adaptive and much more flexible than wheels or anything of the sort, just instead of Feet the popular choice so far is using Threads or wheels, which is much more effective for balance and control than pivoting feets at angles.

On that notion you could make the case that to navigate the surface of the moon, for example, a Humanoid form could have more success than a small car in avoiding getting stuck and overcoming obstacles, although the sheer engineer of such a system, to me, seems quite more advanced than anything i've ever seen in the robotics presented so far...

It is pretty much a huge Exoskeleton when you get right down to it, no?

But of course, this only means anything on space gravity, again, on earth... it's pretty useless.

On the other hand, if you revise the design into a more "Front Mission" route, you have smaller Bipedal (or quadruped) tanks with autonomous arms that can alternate between High speed/Low maneuver tank threads and low speed/high maneuver Mobile walking.

That's on the very least feasible, just not practical.