If you ever doubt that this world might be worth saving, consider the following: There is, right now, at this very moment, an engineer and roboticist in Japan named Kenji Ishida who is working on building a full-sized, drivable car that transforms into a humanoid robot that can shoot missiles out of its hand. If that news doesn't cheer you up (and make you at least slightly terrified) then really, I don't know what will.

As proof of concept, Ishida has spent the past ten years working on a small-scale version, not much bigger than a Transformers action figure, that can be driven and controlled with a wireless controller and can transform into its robot form in less than five seconds, and it is amazing

 

Kenji Ishida's Transformer robot, via Brave Robotics
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In addition to the transforming, which I think we can all agree is the major selling point, Ishida's robot features a wifi camera that can send video of what it "sees" to your phone, and a missile launcher in its arm for taking on tiny, tiny threats to humanity, which are hopefully vulnerable to plastic.

After debuting his robot at Maker Faire Tokyo, Ishida is planning to build ten more, selling them with the pretty hefty price tag of $24,000 in order to raise money for the next step in the process: a full-sized Transformer that you can actually drive around and then direct to wreak fiery vengeance on your enemies. Or, you know, protect humanity. Whatever, it's really your call on that one, you're the one who has a Transformer now.

Ishida hopes to have the full-scale version finished by the year 2030, and one assumes that once that's completed, he'll move into building a robot dinosaur sometime in the following decade.

 

 

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