I love seeing how the world of robotics is evolving at its own pace, but while attempting to be innovative, designers are clearly being influenced by pop culture.

Kenji Ishida and JS Robotics have a project that is in its 8th version already. This little project has them creating a remote control car that fully transforms into a bipedal robot. Check it out:

The transformation process appears to be inspired by traditional transformers, and the car design does appear to be somewhat simplified. I am sure with future versions of this robot, they will probably play more with the aesthetics. Right now it is more about functionality.

In five years this will be the hot toy at Christmas time, but it will have a cute face and be able to dance to J-Pop!

And when Skynet goes live, they will employ these little bastards to monitor our actions – or recover the Matrix.

I love that you could interpret that last part a few different ways!