Thanks to Jeff Bezos’ company Amazon, those with cash to burn have quick access to virtually any object they could want. Some things, however, square measure still reserved for the lucky few. whereas attending the Amazon-hosted, invitation-only Machine-Learning, Automation, and house Exploration conference in the week, Bezos took the chance to sit down within the pilot seat of a 13-foot-tall automaton suit. in an exceedingly image that he tweeted from the event, the machine’s arms square measure unfold wide, apparently mimicking the mogul’s own gesture. Bezos grins from the cockpit with the wide smile of a lucky kid on Christmas morning.
As technology blogger Anil Dash joked in an exceedingly response to Bezos’ tweet, the bald wealthy person appearance disquietingly like Jeff Bridges’ Iron Man villain:
Is this the long run that we tend to square measure welcoming? One within which billionaires slug it out via increased technology? when the top of environmental safety rules change Donald Trump and his cupboard, forcing them to reveal their true kaijü forms and leading them to rampage through our cities, can Bezos be the sole one United Nations agency will save us?
OK, maybe not. If the automaton suit in question appears like one thing out of a phantasy picture, that’s no accident. Its designer Vitaly Bulgarov is best celebrated for his work on films like Transformers: Age of Extinction and also the 2014 remake of Robocop. in an exceedingly 2016 interview with New Atlas, Bulgarov claims, “I tried to avoid observing any sci-fi robots for inspiration, we tend to wished to start out with a chance.” Ultimately, however, he says that the repetitious style method junction rectifier to one thing that happened to seem lots just like the mechanized suits from James Cameron’s film Avatar.
Still, this isn’t—at least not for now—some active creation, despite a 2016 article from Quartz that means models may be “deployed on the North Korean border as a warning to Kim Jong-un’s regime.” because the Verge’s John Vincent notes in a piece of writing regarding Bezos’ journey, although the suit undoubtedly will move—videos show the arms waving regarding in response to the pilot’s gestures—there’s no proof that it’s capable of exerting real force. “From what we’ve seen of the Method-2 up to now, it’s primarily a really spectacular puppet,” Vincent writes.
In different words, if you probably did attempt to punch one thing with it, there square measure tight odds that it'd simply collapse. very much like it resembles a Summoner OmniMech, it looks unlikely to survive a bout with something additional monstrous than the mechanical dragon horse that performed at the capital of Red China Olympiad.
What is it for, then? Quartz claims, “The mechanical suit can reportedly assist in cleansing up and restoring Fukushima when the 2011 atomic energy accident.” At now, even that looks alittle optimistic. All we all know obviously is that it’s sensible at one thing: giving terribly wealthy men the rides of their lives.
