The Tokyo Motor Show witnessed one of the most interesting innovations presented by Yamaha, The MOTOBOT (ver.1), an autonomous motorcycle-riding humanoid, In simple words ‘a biker robot’. See to believe!
The MOTOBOT has pronounced a challenged to nine-times world champion Valentino Rossi that it was ‘created to surpass him.’ The hints of this challenge can be seen in the presentation video where clips of Rossi (in his MotoGP gear) throwing laps on a racetrack in between the MOTOBOT testing.
Built on Yamaha’s world-class motorcycle and robotics technology the blue accented human-like MOTOBOT was shown in a racing crouch astride a specially adapted 1,000cc Yamaha R1M superbike with outrigger-mounted wheels. The objective of creating the MOTOBOT is to improve techniques and performance of the riders on the track and also to achieve tasks beyond human capabilities.
On the racing front, Yamaha’s tech for machine position recognition and machine learning will be utilized to enable MOTOBOT to make its own decisions regarding the best lines to take around a racetrack and the limits of the motorcycle’s performance, so that it can improve its lap times with successive laps of the track.
A brief note released by Yamaha reads that“The task of controlling the complex motions of a motorcycle at high speeds requires a variety of control systems that must function with a high degree of accuracy. We want to apply the fundamental technology and know-how gained in the process of this challenge to the creation of advanced rider safety and rider-support systems and put them to use in our current businesses, as well as using them to pioneer new lines of business.”
In the Tokyo Motor show, Yamaha nailed the non-human-bike-rider-racer concept, made a leaning multi-wheeler, and introduced a more mind-boggling concepts. What’s next? Rise of machines..?? Tell us what you think about it..!!
