Forget motorbikes, Kawasaki creates ride on robotic goat

Maxene London
  • Sign in required

    Please sign in to your account to add a vehicle to favourite

  • Share this article

Video / Kazumichi Moriyama YouTube

Kawasaki has always been all about innovation. And its latest unveiling certainly fits the bill. 

The motorcycle manufacturer has created a robotic ibex (a species of wild goat), which humans can ride. 

The robot goat was unveiled at the iREX robot trade show in Japan last week and was developed by Kawasaki's team of engineers, who have been working on a “Robust Humanoid Platform” (RHP) called Kaleido since 2015.

“Halfway between humanoid robots and wheeled robots, [we] wondered if there was an opportunity,” Masayuki Soube, the lead developer of the RHP, said in an interview published by Kawasaki. “That’s why we started developing Bex, a quadruped walking robot. We believe that the walking technology cultivated in the development of humanoid robots can definitely be applied to quadruped walking robots.”

Bex the robotic goat can also carry loads of up to 100kg, and its body is adjustable to suit its load. 

It comes equipped with cameras so that farmers can utilize it to check on their crops, and can help with plant inspections on industrial farms.

Gallery