Infographic: Could we really build giant "Pacific Rim"-style robots?

Tech News Daily, with consultation from Cornell University professor of robotics Andy Ruina, analyzes the challenges faced when trying to build a massive robot, like the one in Pacific Rim.

Say, for example, that you wanted to build a robot that is 10 times the height of an average human while maintaining human proportions. You also want to make this robot capable of jumping a height equivalent to the distance between its knees and the ground. The distance between knees and ground is also 10 times bigger for that robot than it is for the human, so you have to move 1,000 times the weight 10 times as far, which equals 10,000 times the energy requirement.

This basic problem holds for nature as well as mechanics, said Ruina. That's why even dinosaurs never grew bigger than species such as amphicoelias, which scientists believe was 40 to 60 meters in length and weighed up to 135 tons. "Certainly there's an advantage for animals being bigger—they can eat, squash, chew—but animals are only so big. When they get bigger they have a harder time dragging around their own weight. It's a little bit counterintuitive—you'd think it'd balance out but it doesn't."

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