Man builds mecha in backyard...

[FngKestrel]

Sigourney, eat your heart out.

http://www.adn.com/front/story/5972983p-5874205c.html
Link has photo.

For the clicking impaired:

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)

adn.com story photo
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?"

[raeanna74]

What would the world do without visionaries that follow the path less travelled by?

This sounds like unattainable task he has set out to do but I really hope this guy succeeds.

[hulk]

Oh man, that's awesome. I want one.

[El Kaz]

For a related link, mechaps has been at it for quite a while now. They have very interesting and complete info on their site.. altough it progresses really, really slowly.

[Carno]

Hah, that thing is sweet!

[The Prophet]

Only from the land of the midnight sun.

[Painted]

That is really cool, I'll have to bookmark his site!

[Mr Cassata]

Sounds cool. :-)

Many inventions were created with the inspiration from works of science fiction...

Frankly, I was telling myself it would only be a matter of time before we see such devices roaming around...

Although from a practical standpoint, I could see why a quatruped, or even an octoped robot would be better-suited for combat/rough situations. You could blow up one of the legs from an octoped walker, and it could keep on going, provided it's designed to adapt from eight to seven (or less) legs... Blast off one of the mecha's legs, and it'll topple right onto the ground...

[Cynthetiq]

in the words of keanu....


woah.

[Fremen]

If he wants that thing walking on the grass, he better make his 'feet' as large as possible so as not to sink in the soil, due to its magnificent weight.

/cool project

[FngKestrel]

Originally Posted by Mr Cassata

Sounds cool. :-)

Many inventions were created with the inspiration from works of science fiction...

Frankly, I was telling myself it would only be a matter of time before we see such devices roaming around...

Although from a practical standpoint, I could see why a quatruped, or even an octoped robot would be better-suited for combat/rough situations. You could blow up one of the legs from an octoped walker, and it could keep on going, provided it's designed to adapt from eight to seven (or less) legs... Blast off one of the mecha's legs, and it'll topple right onto the ground...

That's how a 55 ton mech takes out a hundred ton mech.

[Stiltzkin]

I agree with Mr. Cassata. Although mechas are really cool in anime, and especially in Xenogears (woo! Xenosaga episode 2!), they seem like an impractical solution for... anything. The whole thing seems to me to be doomed to fail, but hey, people can dream

[NoSoup]

Kinda neat, but I think the guy is a bit of a nutcase.

Anyone else get that impression for looking at his site? Maybe I am too harsh...

[flamingdog]

They odds were a hundred to one against me.
The world thought the heights were too high to climb.
But people from Missouri never incensed me.
Oh, I wasn't a bit concerned
For from history I had learned
How many, many times the worm had turned.

They all laughed at Christopher Columbus
When he said the world was round.
They all laughed when Edison recorded sound.

They all laughed at Wilbur and his brother
When they said that man could fly.
They told Marconi wireless was a phoney.
It's the same old try.

They laughed at me, wanting you.
Said I was reaching for the moon.
But oh, you came through.
Now they'll have to change their tune.

They all said we never would be happy.
Darling, let's take a bow.
But ho, ho, ho.
Who's got the last laugh now?

Don't write the boy off...

[Fate]

The future of warfare will be all computerised. Assuming that this is the next generation of warfare, "mechas" would definitely need to have embeded pre-detonation defences. Blowing up stingers/RPG/missiles before impact. That would be something to see.

[SSJTWIZTA]

Woah, that guy has way to much free time.

[uncle_el]

while it seems like a very cool idea (who doesn't like the idea of mechs?!!), i'm bothered by this part of the article:

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.

only moving one limb at a time?!?!!? doesn't sound like an awe-inspring mech to me... but i guess he has to start somewhere.

Originally Posted by NoSoup

Kinda neat, but I think the guy is a bit of a nutcase.

Anyone else get that impression for looking at his site? Maybe I am too harsh...

agreed. if he's working on it alone, then why does he write (on the nmx04-1a link):

Initially our mechs will be used for entertainment purposes and will eventually be fitted to fight in a large arena designed to accommodate these great machines. This is of course after prototype testing has proven that such a thing is feasible which we believe it will.

who is this "we" he's referring to? i guess he has friends helping him.

[JumpinJesus]

Originally Posted by uncle_el

who is this "we" he's referring to? i guess he has friends helping him.

He's probably got a whole army of robots already built and they're helping him with this one.


Fuckin' robots.

[Chupes]

That's pretty darn nifty, but you'd think if he wants people to be able to buy them he'd make it do something useful, rather than have flamethrowers and machineguns on its arms.

[FngKestrel]

Originally Posted by Chupes

That's pretty darn nifty, but you'd think if he wants people to be able to buy them he'd make it do something useful, rather than have flamethrowers and machineguns on its arms.

Uh, military?

[genuinegirly]

Genious or insane? His parents will keep rolling their eyes until he gets some real recognition for his work. Awesome.

[AquaFox]

sweeeeeeeeet


i wanna see that thing run down the street

[Carno]

Have any of yall browsed the Mechaps website? I read through the entire site and it sounds like it's some kind of cult or something

[uncle_el]

Originally Posted by JumpinJesus

He's probably got a whole army of robots already built and they're helping him with this one.


Fuckin' robots.

lmao!!! that would be to cool.

[roderickpsu]

To each his own