Building A Life-Sized AT-AT: Utter Craziness?
April 12th, 2011
We’ve just started to see some powered exoskeletons, and they are still pretty clunky affairs. So how can we even think about starting to build a real AT-AT? That doesn’t seem to faze the Mike Koehler, the man behind AT-AT for America – a campaign to build a fully-functional full-size AT-AT.
Even building robots that can walk using four legs is complicated, let alone a 75-foot high monster that can carry over a ton. The trick I think is to try and make defense contractors try and build a replacement for a tank that can walk.
An AT-AT can move up to 40mph, carry 40 stormtroopers, and on top of that, an extra ton of cargo. It’s going to take a while, but if it ever does come out, it will reign the battlefield. Honestly, I think it’s just too large and unwieldy. We’ll probably see exoskeletons in the field for soldiers way before this, but I could be wrong. Mike is working on a Kickstarter page to raise funds for the build, but for now go here if you want to get involved or make a donation.
[via DVice]
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Categories: Future Tech Geek Art + Craft Retro Science Fiction Strange + Wonderful Weird Science
It wouldn’t reign the battlefield
The legs will be a very good thing blow up first.
A very powerful IED, a hellfire or another kind of explosives would take it down instantly.
also, a harpoon and tow cable?
Good luck with that
The harpoon will just hit it and fall to the ground because of the armor. You need like.. A railgun! Shooting a steelrod attached to a thick nanotube.
It’s a reference to Star Wars! The ships flew round it’s legs with a cable, which tangled the AT-AT and it collapsed!
I think there’s a basic problem here. It’s a kewl toy but not a serious military weapon. The military spend billions on development, if they’d wanted AT-ATs they’d have George Lucas tied up somewhere now. It might be nice to make on the cheap, for fun, but it’s never gonna make it as a proper battlefield toy.
That said, even for fun is asking a lot. Perhaps scale it down by a factor of 5 or 10, so you can ride on it’s back.