Yamaha's latest creation: Motobot, a motorcycle-riding robot aimed to help improve motorcycles for humans down the road.
Perhaps no motorsports series is as dangerous as MotoGP. Riders zig-zag around the track at blinding speed, often dragging their knees as they shriek around tight corners.
But Valentino Rossi, one of the most celebrated bike racers on the circuit, has been handed a challenge. It may not happen this year, or even the next, but Motobot has promised to beat the nine-time MotoGP champ.
That’s all the more impressive when you realize Motobot is an “autonomous motorcycle-riding humanoid robot” developed by Yamaha. Introduced at this year’s Tokyo Motor Show, it looks a fair bit like a Star Wars Storm Trooper done up in a menacing blue.
“I am Motobot,” the robot said in a video put together by Yamaha. “I was created to surpass you,” it says to Rossi.
Autonomous vehicles are quickly moving from science fiction to real-world applications, as visitors to the Tokyo Motor Show will readily realize. There are more than a score of concept vehicles showing off the technology, and most major automakers are already testing self-driving cars on public roads.
Clad in a menacing blue and reminiscent of a Storm Trooper from Star Wars, Yamaha's Motobot can ride at slow speeds right now.
But putting a robot on two wheels is an entirely different matter. Yamaha didn’t set out to create a motorcycle that could somehow operate autonomously, but create a robot that would operate a bike just like a human. Motobot sits with his helmeted, human-like head poised low to improve aerodynamics. And it has arm and leg-like appendages for steering and operating the brakes and throttle controls.
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Even so, the android rider is fairly limited in its capabilities, for now. It needs a human assistant to help get it going, much like a parent guiding a child the first time their training wheels have come off. And it can’t ride all that much faster – yet.
“I am improving my skills every day but I am not sure I could even beat the five-year-old you,” Motobot tells Rossi in the Yamaha video. “Perhaps if I learn everything about you, I will be able to catch up.”
Yamaha definitely intends to have Motobot try, anyway. Using a mix of sensors, an ultraprecise GPS system and “machine learning,” the company expects to have the robot capable of running a straight line of speeds up to 100 kmh, or 62 mph, by year-end. And it should be able to manage a slalom course, albeit at slower speeds.
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By 2017, Yamaha hopes to get the top speed up to 200 kmh, or 125 mph, and eventually it believes Motobot will have skills that would surpass most riders, if not a champion like Rossi.
The goal, said the company, is 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.”
The long-term payoff? It isn’t necessarily to start a new race series for robots – though that would certainly be an interesting opportunity. Yamaha suggests the system could help it better understand human riders and create improved safety technologies.
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The Japanese maker’s robot rider wasn’t the only surprise it dropped on the Tokyo Motor Show this year. It also unveiled a prototype sports car, dubbed Sports Ride. While officials wouldn’t comment about their plans, there are some signs it might want to put the two-seater into production in the near future. No word on whether it might teach Motobot to drive that vehicle, as well.