It’s 2018, and you know what that means: mech racing isn’t the sport of the future anymore, it’s the sport of the present. A company called Furrion brought “Prosthesis,” its first exo-bionic racing mech, to CES this year. It looks bonkers. Prosthesis is 15 feet tall and weighs over 8,000 pounds. It’s an exoskeleton, not a robot, meaning it doesn’t operate automatically, it’s completely controlled by the human trapped inside. Like how it works in Power Rangers.
Prosthesis can run up to 20 mph, step over obstacles, and run for up to an hour on a battery charge. It also has a very tiny cockpit, and I was told repeatedly that I am too large a human to fit inside. This makes me sad. I am very sad now.
But Furrion isn’t happy just with one racing mech, it wants to start a whole league. It just announced the X1 Mech Racing League, and it hopes Prosthesis is just the first in a new genre. I would definitely watch mech racing on Twitch. Let’s make this happen. Just please make a larger version for larger people. Thank you.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.