Ever dreamed of a real, life-sized Transformer in your garage? The Turkish startup Letrons now offers you exactly that: Their animatronic Autobot drives like a car, transforms like a Transformer, and supposedly fights off space threats with its built-in smoke machine and sound effects.
Letrons’s Transformer seems to be built upon a BMW E92 coupé chassis. According to the company, the beast is packed with powerful hydraulics and servo motors, allowing it to transform and move fast. Sensors all around the chassis give it some interactivity and prevent it from crushing innocent bystanders when in remote-control mode. Interestingly, its movable arms aren’t attached to the body, but to its extendable side-wings and feature hands with actuated wrists and fingers. The Autobot also can move its head, which pops right out of the hood.
Admittedly, Letrons must have spent a lot of time on the dark side of the moon and working in secrecy before they released footage of a working and polished prototype. It’s unclear if Letron’s Transformers will cooperate with the US military in solving armed conflicts, but they are certainly good for a show. Enjoy the video below!
Thanks to [Itay] for the tip!
I think the should have put the smoke machine somewhere else…
The backside? :P
P.S.: The trees in the background look amazing!
Patent Pending? Seriously?
Yeah I’m not entirely clear on what they would be trying to patent.
Maybe how they made everything move? If the sounds heard are not just pre-recorded effects, there seems to be a ratcheting mechanism going on when the robot erects itself.
Too bad it can’t walk, now it’s cool but pretty pointless otherwise.
I suspect they’re patenting the mechanisms so that they can produce toy-sized working replicas for mass production.
when they can get it to walk I’ll be impressed ;-)
Nice project, too bad they chose such a boring car as a base (E92 3 Series, doesn’t even look like its an M3 to me). Would have been much cooler done to something like a muscle car or an Italian sports car or something.
You know bumblebee was originally a VW beetle?
I also don’t think you wanna screw with the structural integrity of anything particularly high powered.
I seriously doubt that they left the engine in there. I think they’re playing engine sound effects, and using electric motors to roll the car. They spent a lot of time and effort on something that ends up being nothing more than an oversized toy.
Derp, watched it first on phone screen, now see what you mean, not a car, just a shell. Took the phrase, “drives like a car” literally, like someone could get in and actually drive it like a car, on the road.
Am I the only one that doesn’t see any seam for the panel where the head pops out from the hood?
The hatch is in the middle right up against the window.
I’m not impressed, it looks so simple, like a toy for a special event.
The did a great job of making the car look perfect! I’d love to see a making-of video on this one.
Organizers of monster truck shows are going to beat a path to their door. Other than that, I see a sad franchise business of showing up for kids’ birthdays and used car dealership sale events.
-sad +lucrative … do you know how much it is just to get a middle aged cat lady wigged up as Elsa to a kids party??
Said “franchise” already existed in a manner of speaking, or at least it did back in the late 80’s or early 90’s.
You could call up some company (I doubt it was Hasbro, but surely a contractor for them) and have someone come out to your kid’s birthday party made up as one of the original G1 Transformers. Of course the selection of ‘bots was small, and being an actor in a costume meant they couldn’t transform (at least not like in the cartoon).
It needs guns so it could be part of the megabots fight. Then BMW could pick up the shipping to get them all in the same place.
It would be more profitable to make an upright self parking and driving BMW
More like “Real, Life-Sized GoBots”
Yes! Tuck their arms in, lay them face down and it’s a car! I had Happy Meal toys that were more inspired than that crap.
This is still quite a feat of engineering and incredible attention to detail but, no, definitely not Transformer-grade.
I forsee this animatronic device getting sunbleached in a Universal Studios “tram ride” tour lot.
Hey let’s not bash the go bots had my mother not thrown out my collection of nrfb gen 1 die casts I could actually afford to build some of the bigger projects I’ve seen here over the years, hell the mispainted race cars alone would fund a very decent 3d printer these days.