Eee-urrk-urrk-urrk-urk! A pair of Japanese hobbyists have built a transforming robot that can walk or, when in sports car form, drive around autonomously. It’s called the J-deite Quarter and is four feet tall. The goal, apparently, is to make a full-sized transformer… just because they can.

The team consists of Kenji Ishida and Wataru Yoshizaki of Brave Robotics and Asratec. The team has been working on transformers since 2012 when they released a table-top model. They hope to make a full, eight-foot model in the next year.

Some specs, for those who want to know all the details on their future robotic overlords:

￼Height in robot mode/length in vehicle mode: 1.3 m,

weight: 35 kg, maximum battery power: 3 kw,

operating time: 1 hour, number of seats: 2,

controlled by V-Sido OS.

Power source: servo motor manufactured byFutaba Corp.[Robot Mode SPEC]

Maximum walking speed: 1 km/h, gripping weight: 0.1 kg.[Vehicle Mode SPEC]

Maximum traveling speed: 10km/h, minimum road clearance: 40 mm.

That’s about half a mile an hour walking and about six miles an hour driving, which isn’t fast but I suppose it’s a start. That means Megatron and Starscream will be long gone before J-deite Quarter makes it to the scene of the crime (unless it rode on the back of Optimus Prime.) Now if they could only program it to explain the ridiculous Transformers movie storylines we’d truly be in business.

via Simplebotics