The World’s Largest Robot: LW-Monononofu

Decades ago, sci­ence fic­tion films and car­toons often depict­ed a future filled with robots. In cin­e­ma and lit­er­a­ture, space age robots have been intro­duced that can take care of most every­day tasks. Some shows have paint­ed a much bleak­er pic­ture of a future in which robots will rule the world and humans will be at their mer­cy. For­tu­nate­ly, this sce­nario did not mate­ri­al­ize.

The role of robots in our lives

We are def­i­nite­ly not yet at the lev­el of robot­ic automa­tion pre­dict­ed by our ances­tors. How­ev­er, robots have become an impor­tant part of the world we now live in. Large robots fill fac­to­ries around the world, help­ing to auto­mate process­es that used to require human inter­ven­tion. Tiny robots are help­ing doc­tors oper­ate on patients in com­plex new surg­eries. They are able to solve med­ical prob­lems that used to be fatal.

We even have robots in our homes. Some peo­ple have robot­ic vac­u­um clean­ers that auto­mat­i­cal­ly move back and forth across the car­pet, pick­ing up cook­ie crumbs and cat hair. Many peo­ple also have robots on their kitchen table that they can talk to. With a sim­ple request, they can hear the cur­rent weath­er, get a choco­late cake recipe, or order a new spat­u­la to flip pan­cakes.

Japanese robot LW-Monononofu

To get start­ed, watch a video on how the giant machine was cre­at­ed:

But what about those giant robots that look like Trans­form­ers heroes? Thanks to Japan­ese engi­neer Masaa­ki Nagu­mo, such giant robots can now be clos­er to real­i­ty. Inspired by his child­hood favorite ani­me series “Mobile War­rior Gun­dam”, Nagu­mo cre­at­ed his own almost five-ton robot, 9 meters high, which he called LW-Mononono­fu. He believes that this is the largest robot in the world.

Sit­ting inside the robot­’s cock­pit, Nagu­mo can con­trol the robot­’s arms and legs. He can walk, turn and even move his fin­gers. The air gun on the right hand can also fire sponge balls at about 100 kilo­me­ters per hour.

The giant robot took six years to build and is main­ly used to adver­tise Nagu­mo’s busi­ness, which designs agri­cul­tur­al equip­ment. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the robot was built high­er than the doors of its work­shop, so it will only be able to leave its lim­its after dis­man­tling.

Rio Tinto’s AutoHaul Robo Train

How­ev­er, Gun­dam is not the only one who claims the title of the world’s largest robot. Min­ing group Rio Tin­to believes its Auto­Haul is also up to the mark. The Auto­Haul, worth almost one bil­lion dol­lars, is an autonomous train that trans­ports iron ore across the Aus­tralian desert to the coast. But this is not a robot in its clas­si­cal sense, but rather a train. You can ver­i­fy this by watch­ing the video:

Inter­est­ing selec­tion: The work that robots will do in the future

Will we see more autonomous trains in the future? It would seem that this is easy to do, since the trains are on rails and do not need con­stant con­trol. The tech­nol­o­gy already exists to do this, but experts don’t believe that train automa­tion will be cost-effec­tive in the long run. The cost of insur­ing increased lia­bil­i­ty and equip­ping trains and track sys­tems with sen­sors far out­weighs the cost of hav­ing one or two dri­vers oper­ate the trains.