Yamaha announced Friday that it will unveil a bunch of concept motorcycles at the Tokyo Motor Show later this month—and some kind of robot to ride them, apparently.

The PES2, pictured above, is a concept street bike that Yamaha has fitted with an additional electric motor that will drive the front wheel. It will weigh below 287 pounds. This is a pretty rad idea because an electric motor could offer the perfect opportunity for a usable 2WD motorcycle. It's much easier to simply put a motor in the hub of the front wheel than engineer a bunch of gears, shafts, or chains that will drive the power from a traditional engine to the front wheel.

The PED2 is designed to be a more traditional, RWD off-road electric dirtbike. Yamaha has released nothing other than the fact that it will use a detachable lithium ion battery, and that it will weigh below 220 pounds.

We're also pretty excited to see the very cool Resonator125. With its retro styling, small frame, and low power, it looks like the perfect fashionable first motorcycle, like a tiny Ducati Scrambler.

Also slipped rather surreptitiously into this press release is a mention of an unveiling and display of "an autonomous motorcycle-riding humanoid robot that combines motorcycle and robotics technologies." We don't know what to make of this. It is a motorcycle-mounted Asimo, Honda's four-foot-tall robot? Or something else? Guess we'll just have to wait until the show to find out. Who knows? Maybe Yamaha is working on automating the food delivery service.

Via Jalopnik

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