Furrion makes RVs and appliances, among other things, but the company wants to branch out in a big way. Their giant, four-legged exoskeleton on display at CES was certainly one way to do it. The rig is the first of a proposed “mech racing league.”
The 8,000-pound beast is as much elaborate puppet as it is a robot: a human sitting inside moves their limbs to control the exoskeleton’s legs.
“Prosthesis is a sports machine and requires an athlete to operate,” Furrion writes. Don’t necessarily expect to see these racing around a track any time soon, especially because this one currently travels at a top speed of 20 mph. It’s certainly eye-catching, though, and might contribute to medical research as well.
Furrion’s press materials state: “Prosthesis represents a departure from conventional, human scale exo-bionic technology, integrating off-road racing with industrial motion control to produce an entirely new breed of human piloted machine.”