Alaskan Man Building Monster Robot

[Monte Smith]

Um...do you need a permit for something like this?

Giant humanoid will fire flames
Ananova.com

An Alaskan man is building an 18ft hydraulic humanoid which can fire 20ft flames from its arms.



Carlos Owens Jr says his creation will also be able to shoot 9ins nails from its shoulders.

He has been building the £10,000 ($18,700) machine, which he calls a 'mecha', at his parents' house in Wasilla since October 2003.

[jaka]

Disastrous effects of japanime combined with weed.

[Uli]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

Um...do you need a permit for something like this?

Not in Vermont.

Oh man, that is total fucking sweetness!!!


I gotta get me one of those!

[Chris D]

Looks like a Power Rangers Megazord to me.

[Gentle Giant]

Obviously modeled on this Alaskan giant:

[Ron Thorne]

I'm amazed that we haven't seen a news story on this development, frankly.

Wasilla is only about 40 miles north of Anchorage in the Matanuska Valley.

Jaka may be onto something with his comment. Weed is a prime product of this region. In fact, there's a specific strain which is renowned for its potency...Matanuska Thunderf**k. Do a quick Google search and you'll quickly see the praises being sung. It's often referred to simply as MTF.

[Uli]

Holy cow!

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by jaka

Disastrous effects of japanime combined with weed.

Yup. The guy really needs to get out of his parents' house.

[frankenmeister7]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

Oh man, that is total fucking sweetness!!!


I gotta get me one of those!

you do need a permit in florida for that. in chicago they would give that dude a thumbs up and send him to IT for copyrights.


just love your avatar scott.

[mke]

Will it shoot flames and nails of its own accord?

[Ron Thorne]

Somehow I missed this story yesterday in the Anchorage Daily News. Oh, I know, I was probably glued to the pre-inauguration coverage on CNN.

Here's a little more detail. Yeow.




Wasilla man hard at work transforming 'mecha' dream into reality
Carlos Owens Jr. hopes to pilot 18-foot-tall robot, with fists for crushing cars, at Butte racetrack


By ZAZ HOLLANDER
Anchorage Daily News

(Published: January 2, 2005)

Carlos Owens Jr., standing 6 feet, 5 inches tall, is still dwarfed by the "mecha" -- mechanical exoskeleton -- he's building at his family's home outside Wasilla. The 27-year-old iron worker has been working on his creation since October 2003, spending $15,000 of his own money. He hopes to debut the machine, with sledgehammer fists and flame-thrower arms, at the Alaska Raceway this summer. (Photo by Jim Lavrakas / Anchorage Daily News) Click on photo to enlarge

WASILLA -- An 18-foot-tall horned steel robot with red eyes and claw hands is rising in a snowy suburban yard outside Wasilla. The red metal monster is the brainchild of Carlos Owens Jr., a 27-year-old ironworker and former U.S. Army mechanic.

It's actually a "mecha," a mechanized shell that bestows robotic powers on whoever pilots it. Imagine the robot suit Sigourney Weaver wore in "Aliens" or the battle robots from "Matrix Revolutions." Owens is trying to build what he says would be the world's first fully functional mecha.

He plans to start testing the project in spring for a debut this summer at a Butte racetrack in a show-stopper featuring flame throwers, bullets and sledge-hammer fists for crushing cars.

He seems nonplussed by the fact that he's trying to succeed where industrial giants like General Electric have failed. And that he's doing it from his parents' back yard on Scheelite Drive.

"I'm just going to build it and get it done," Owens said, a welding helmet pushed back on his head as he looked up at his creation. "I'll question myself later."

Don't let that aw-shucks attitude fool you. Baby-faced but 6 feet, 5 inches tall, Owens is a man obsessed. The fever to create his own mecha has driven him since he was a boy. Now he's finally getting his first taste of fame.

The backyard mecha got national play in a three-page story on CNET's technology-oriented Web site, www.news.com. Since the story appeared Dec. 22, Owens has counted about 45,000 hits on his own Web site, www.neogentronyx.com. Various local media outlets are clamoring for interviews.

Yet his closest relatives and his fiancee still don't quite get it.

"Nobody in my immediate family completely understands what I'm doing," Owens said. "And I can't blame them. How many people have an 18-foot robot in their back yard?"

"Nobody gets it except for kids," he added a bit later. "Kids get it better than anybody I've explained it to."

Owens grew up playing with Tonka trucks, watching Transformers and Voltron cartoons and "old-school" Japanese anime like Robotech. He learned to weld at age 14. He's the kind of guy who looks at something and wants to know how it works so he can build one himself. It's a calling that's already inspired several inventions, he says, including a self-starting seismic device to search for oil deposits.

Carlos Jr. -- CJ, as his dad calls him -- was born in the Philippines, the first child of a couple who met in the U.S. Air Force. The family came to Alaska in 1994. Carlos Jr. signed up for the Army Reserves at 19, spent three years as a heavy equipment mechanic and remains in the inactive Ready Reserve.

He worked four seasons for a seismic company on the North Slope. Last year, he became an ironworker, doing jobs including the new wing at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport and the new Valley hospital.

Owens is building the mecha in his parents' yard because his former landlord frowned on the project when Owens began work in October 2003. Later, Owens moved in with his parents. Work is slow in winter. And he puts all his earnings toward the mecha -- $15,000 so far.

Owens envisions arena fights someday pitting mecha against mecha, a new sport that would combine athleticism with engineering. He eventually wants to make mechas available to the general public with prices starting as low as $35,000, "more affordable per pound than any other robot."

Way down the road, he says, his invention could even fight wars or forest fires.

He scoffs at the U.S. military for spending $50 million on another mecha under development, a self-powered exoskeleton to boost the speed, strength and endurance of soldiers in combat. A photo on the Defense Sciences Office Web site shows a massive black backpack attached to metal leg braces.

The mecha concept dates back more than 50 years. The boy-controlled cartoon robot "Gigantor" debuted in the late 1950s as Tetsujin 28 in a Japanese boys magazine, according to Fred Ladd's Official Gigantor Web site. The News.com story by John Borland includes a series of photographs illustrating the evolution of mecha, starting with Gigantor and followed by a more modern anime mecha, "Mobile Suit Gundam."

Meanwhile, in a lab in the late '60s, the U.S. Navy collaborated with General Electric to create the Hardiman prototype, an incredibly awkward-looking robotic suit. The lab could only get one heavy wrench-topped arm to work.

Here's how Owens says his own "mech" will work: Viewing the world through an LCD screen, he will operate the giant steel suit from a foam-padded compartment in the mecha's body.

Twenty-three levers inside control forty-six possible movements. Rather than pull each lever individually, Owens will rig a system of cable lines to the levers that control larger motions. When he moves an arm, the mecha's arm will move. He moves a leg, a leg moves.

Owens says he couldn't afford high-tech equipment. An 18-horsepower gas engine should provide more than enough juice to operate the 1 ½-ton suit, provided the human inside doesn't try to move more than one limb at a time. A hydraulic system powers the joints.

Owens built the bottom half twice as heavy as the top. He doesn't want to topple. It could be hard to get up. "I don't want it to fall on its face," he says. "I'm going to be inside of it."

Five years ago, Owens built a 35-foot-tall prototype from wood; it's folded for storage amid the birch trees in the yard. He says he initially hoped to unveil the mecha at last summer's Alaska State Fair but ran out of money for parts. Now he hopes to take the mecha for its first test walk in the yard sometime this spring, after the snow clears.

He hopes to drum up contributions when he unleashes the mecha at Alaska Raceway Park just off the Old Glenn Highway this summer. The track's co-owner, Karen Lackey, had Owens as an English student at Colony High School, where she now teaches history.

Lackey is glad Owens finally has an outlet for his creativity. In school, he filled spiral notebooks with science fiction, Lackey said. But the track owner is also looking forward to this summer's debut of a car-crushing, flame-throwing mecha that could draw a whole new kind of racing fan.

"The thing is big and it moves, and I guess it shoots fire," Lackey said. "What more can you ask?"



Reporter Zaz Hollander can be reached at the Daily News Wasilla office at 907-352-6711 or at zhollander@adn.com.

Wow. Ron's story is MUCH better than that shitbag Monte posted.

Goddamn Monte, you've really been sucking lately.

[frankenmeister7]

the more i look at that creation do i see a robot/transformer called "voltran" that my twins brothers played with in the early eighties.

it had a show of the same name. four "super kids" with powers of superman that they powered up together that took on the appearance of a huge tiger flying in the air. the show was also in the future. now we have pokemon or did and owgiwa show.

i now have at least four of these antique collector toys for my twin boys.

got to go back to ron thornes full article to see how this guy got his idea going.

later -

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by Scott Douchebag

Wow. Ron's story is MUCH better than that shitbag Monte posted.

Yeah, that guy doesn't even know what's going on right under his nose. I have to point it all out.

Originally Posted by Scott Douchebag

Goddamn Monte, you've really been sucking lately.

You talking to me or are you fleeing an Alaskan mecha? Cause either way you're going to be digging nails out of the smoking embers of your buttcheeks.

Bring it on, motherfucker!!



I've got a friend who knows karate!!!

Note to Rita: the critter posted above is known as a "squirrel".

[bruce massey]

My moneys on her!!!!!!!!!!

[mke]

I fully expect menacing strangers to appear, claiming to have to destroy this mecha "to avoid a global cataclysm 78 years from now" and dragging Owens into improbable adventures (involving trucks).