Sometimes it feels as though scientists and engineers have never watched the Terminator or Matrix movies at all. The Guardian reports that Japanese company Suidobashi Heavy Industry is showing off a new robot called “Kuratas” that weighs four tons, stands at 13 feet tall and comes armed with a gun capable of firing “6,000 ball-bearing pellets a minute.” The robot, unveiled this week at the Wonder festival in Tokyo, may sound scary but Suidobashi insists it “makes your dream of becoming a robot pilot comes [sic] true.”
Humans have two ways of piloting Kuratas, either by climbing into the robot itself or by controlling it remotely via a smartphone connected to a 3G network. Suidobashi warns users in its introductory video that Kuratas is “not a normal vehicle so it doesn’t guarantee you safety and comfort.” For anyone interested in buying one, the robot costs roughly $1.28 million.
