I’m not sure how I missed it for this long, but Yamaha has a robot that rides a motorcycle. Not only rides, but races. In fact, this Popular Mechanics article details the race between this robot (named MOTOBOT) and arguably the best man to ever race motorcycles, Valentino Rossi. I thought I was fairly up to date on motorcycle technology, but seeing as the first reports on MOTOBOT were back in 2015, I guess I was wrong.
I am not embarrassed to say that this thing kinda creeps me out! When I look at the photo in the article, I’m immediately reminded of all the sci-fi movies that have killer robots. If the next Star Wars movie had a droid character that looked like this it would surprise no one. One Day humanity could be slaves to such robots (okay, I’m exaggerating a bit).
If I overlook the creepy stuff, I can see the great implications that this could have for motorcycles. Imagine being able to road test a bike without worrying about injuring a human. If you remove the fear of injury or death, then a motorcycle could be ridden to its absolute limits. Now, you can argue that many of the people testing and racing motorcycles may not have that fear, but we cannot be sure of that. I repeat myself when I say this, but I’m really looking forward to what the future holds for motorcycles.
“In the twenty-first century, the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization.” - Nikola Tesla
No comments:
Post a Comment