Transformers in the real world #1

I often struggle with the question “What’s your favourite novel?” because if I’m truthful, it’s a little-known and obscure Doctor Who novel by Lance Parkin called “Infinity Doctors,” but in many social circles, it’s a little embarrassing, such that I often default to HG Wells’ War of the Worlds.

Truthfully, War of the Worlds is not a favourite, but a story that has had the most impact on me from its various different versions over the years. The first and most impactful was Jeff Wayne’s album, released in the late 1970s, for which my Mum and Dad had a copy on vinyl …and it gave me nightmares. We had a version on cassette that would get played on long car journeys, but the electricity pylons in the distance could easily be the tripod machines coming over the hills, ready to destroy us with their heat ray.

Despite the various modern retellings, including Steven Spielberg’s movie version in 2005, none of the designs of the war machines have ever been able to create the same impact as those in the artwork for Jeff Wayne’s album, designed by Mike Trim. Not until the UK/French series from 2019 starring Gabriel Byrne, whereby the giant tripodal machines of the novel were replaced by small quadrupedal robotic ‘dogs’ similar in design to the Boston Dynamics’ BigDog, which were able to create a modern-day terror.

Over the past decade, various robotic dogs have been developed based upon that original Boston Dynamics’ concept, and there’s been significant progress in the design and applications. The main usage has been military, including most recently Japan using a series of robot dogs in a multinational military training event. However, they’ve also been developed to aid in disaster situations, site surveillance, agriculture, education, and even as social companions amongst many others. I’ve even had an opportunity to see a couple of models in use, post-2019 and viewing that TV series, such that I’ve been somewhat taken aback to see some in real life.

With the first wave of Transformers in 1984, the Evil Decepticons included the transforming Walkman Soundwave and his supporting cassettes. Although not strictly a robot dog, Decepticon Ravage was a quadrupedal robot panther similar to the future Boston Dynamics machine and, like their future robot dog, Ravage had mainly military and surveillance applications. Ravage was known for his stealth, being able to hide in the shadows and covertly recording messages which could be transferred back to Soundwave. The similarity between Ravage, his functions, and the future robotic developments 30 years after he first appeared is quite striking.

Notably, quadrupedal robotic development appears to be more advanced than bipedal robotic development. It actually creates a challenge to what purpose and value bipedal robots have as a practical application, given the complexity to make them effectively work.

Although since 1984 there have been numerous bipedal Transformers that are able to change into a quadrupedal form, either robotic or the evolved Transformers with “beast forms” as their alternative modes (“alt modes”), Ravage’s original alt mode was a 1980s cassette tape. The fictional explanation of how a giant robotic dog can change into a 10cm tape is via a process called “mass displacement” without an explicable scientific basis (probably the ability for mass to temporarily change to energy for a reduced form). Over the years, alternative versions of Ravage have had different forms, but a notable version is an evolved beast version that changed from a panther to a bipedal robot.

This raises the question of whether there’s any value and purpose to a quadrupedal robotic form having the ability to change into a bipedal form? In future articles, I’ll compare robotic technology developments to various Transformer alt modes, and although multiple different alt modes may be of value in certain applications, the challenge remains as to the purpose of bipedal robots. Ironically, for robotic technology, the humanoid form seems to be the least value-added versus the numerous potential other forms that could have purpose-built applications.

Conducting a search for the various applications of quadrupedal robots created an impressively large list, showing the adaptability of the robot dog technology. Whether any of these will ever be able to successfully hide in shadows remains to be seen, but stealth functionality and recording messages is already a function that can be performed. Ravage the robot mode already exists; however, Ravage the Transformer with a cassette tape alt mode is significantly less likely, not least because having a cassette tape alt mode is completely pointless in the 2020s.