Who hasn’t wanted a wearable robot suit equipped with a BB Gatling gun that fires off 6,000 rounds per minute? Well, if you have an extra $1.02 million laying around and are a fan of online shopping, today’s your lucky day.
The Kuratas by Suidobashi Heavy Industry, which looks like something straight out of a Transformers movie, is now for sale on Amazon Japan. The mech suit takes its cues from your facial expressions to know when to shoot at an enemy. For example, smiling sends a signal to the robot to unleash the Gatling gun. This command is called the “smile shot.”
Here’s how it works. You can control it by either climbing into its cockpit or use a smartphone connected to a 3G network. Kuratas is 13 feet tall, weighs four tons, and has four mechanical legs that allow it to move at 10 kilometers per hour. Kuratas runs on diesel and can detect targets with its automatic alignment.
“I had this vision of the future for robots, which is my passion,” Kogoro Kurata, the robot’s creator, tells Zoomin.TV. “It seemed unlikely that anyone would develop giant robots however long I waited. And so I thought, I might as well make one myself – that’s how it started.”
Unfortunately that $1 million only gets you the starter kit. The arms and forearms are sold separately. And there are no shipping discounts via Amazon Prime. But I’m guessing if you’re spending $1 million for a robot, you can scrounge up some loose change for the needed accessories.
Kuratas was designed in 2012, and at the time Suidobashi Heavy Industry said it received more than 3,000 orders for the robot. But they all eventually backed out, thinking the product wasn’t real. “It’s funny to see the panicked emails come in from people abroad, saying they thought it was a joke,” Kurata said in 2012.
There is only one unit in stock for the Kuratas on Amazon Japan. Let’s hope whoever buys it just uses it to “toy” around and never fires off the Gatling gun.
