Is it possible to make a transformer

You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below. More From Transformers. Transformers Movies 8 Black Mirror things that already exist in real life You can now have your takeaway delivered by a robot You can now own this NASA robot to aid your nightmares You can now visit Hollyoaks' Ste's cafe in real life 9 movie products that you can now buy in real life 'Transformers' robots revealed.

Its team spent eight months creating Antimon, a life-size Transformer made from a shiny, red BMW, with an electronic battery, degree neck movement, and remote control movement software.

Maybe the AllSpark does exist after all…. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today. More about Transformers: The Last Knight.

First, Prime has to be a self-reconfiguring robot. Some self-reconfiguring robots, or robots that can change their shapes to perform different tasks, exist today. However, they're very different from Optimus Prime. As Belote explains:. If engineers figured out how to make interchangeable modules on Optimus Prime's scale, it might still be impossible to provide the power to move them.

In his vehicle form, Optimus Prime can run on ordinary diesel fuel. But walking is far less efficient than rolling on wheels. In order to walk, Prime would need far more power than a diesel engine could provide.

Here's Belote's analysis of how to handle Prime's power requirements:. So hydraulic power might allow Prime to walk, but the hydraulic system itself would create a different set of problems. These pipes, along with Prime's fuel lines and electrical wiring, would have to remain undamaged or even untouched during transformation. After surviving the transformation to robot form, Prime would then have to walk as a biped. Belote describes what it would take for this to happen: Since traditional semis frequently exceed 30 tons in weight, the final weight of Prime could easily be in the 35 to 40 ton range.

Compare this to the world's best "walking" robot, Honda's ASIMO robot , which has a total weight of pounds and yet can only walk for about 40 minutes electrically powered and at a max speed of less than 2 mph. In addition, robots cannot easily mimic the motion of walking. With humans, however, there is no 'feedback' mechanism - your brain does not constantly communicate to your legs on where to be placed.

Instead, you simply lean forward and 'fall,' setting your leg to absorb the shock when your foot makes contact with the floor.

So it's not likely that we could see a working Optimus Prime or robot like him in our lifetimes. But robots that can change their shape or become any shape already exist. We'll look at some of them - and how they compare to Prime - in the next section. The coolest thing about Transformers, of course, is that they can take two completely different shapes. Most can be bipedal robots or working vehicles. Some can instead transform into weapons or electronic devices. A Transformer's two forms have vastly different strengths and capabilities.

This is completely different from most real robots, which are usually only good at performing one task or a few related tasks. The Mars Exploration Rovers , for example, can do the following:. An Exploration Rover wouldn't be very good at tasks that don't fit into these categories. It can't, for example, assemble a bridge , fit into very small spaces or build other robots. In other words, it would make a lousy search-and-rescue robot, and it wouldn't fit in at all in an automated factory.

That's why engineers are developing reconfiguring robots. Like Transformers, these robots can change their shape to fit the task at hand. But instead of changing from one shape to one other shape, like a bipedal robot to a tractor-trailer, reconfiguring robots can take many shapes.

They're much smaller than real Transformers would be; some reconfiguring robot modules are small enough to fit in a person's hand. A module is essentially a small, relatively simple robot or piece of a robot. Modular robots are made of lots of these small, identical modules. A modular robot can consist of a few modules or many, depending on the robot's design and the task it needs to perform. Some modular robots currently exist only as computer simulations; others are still in the early stages of development.

But they all operate on the same basic principle - lots of little robots can combine to create one big one. Most modular, reconfiguring robots fit into one of three categories: chain, lattice and modular configuration.

Chain robots are long chains that can connect to one another at specific points. Depending on the number of chains and where they connect, these robots can resemble snakes or spiders. They can also become rolling loops or bipedal, walking robots. A set of modular chains could navigate an obstacle course by crawling through a tunnel as a snake, crossing rocky terrain as a spider and riding a tricycle across a bridge as a biped.

Most need a human or, in theory, another robot, to manually secure the connections with screws. Computer simulations are a vital part of robotics research, particularly with reconfiguring robots. Scientists use computers to figure out how modules will move in relation to one another before teaching the modules how to do so. In some cases, computer simulations exist long before actual robots. The basic idea of a lattice robot is that swarms of small, identical modules that can combine to form a larger robot.

Several prototype lattice robots already exist, but some models exist only as computer simulations. Lattice robots move by crawling over one another, attaching to and detaching from connection points on neighboring robots. It's like the way the tiles move in a sliding tile puzzle.