The first stage of this project is finally complete. It was extremely fun to judge this because we received many applications, all with a wide variety of ideas. Today we've added four new members to our group, each with their own distinctive character. I believe one of the real problems now is achieving movement, because making that actually happen is so complicated.
Mr. Kaneko's idea is to actually have it move by combining two robots, therefore avoiding the difficult situation of having a robot that stands on two legs. Mr. Chiang's idea is to actually have the legs walk the 18m tall robot through clever contrivances inside the structure of the robot. Mr. Kihara's idea is totally different. Since it's too difficult to put the entire device inside the robot, construct a device outside it to assist in getting it to walk. Mr. Okada's idea is a system development style, where we look at what tools are necessary for developing the future robot standard, that is, the next generation Gundam.
I believe these are the best people to add to our group because they each approach this project from very different angles.
When this project first got off the ground, many of my robot specialist friends told me, "There's no way you can do this." Getting an 18m robot to walk is equivalent to getting a six-story building to walk. Since this is such a difficult project, even slightly preposterous, the word "challenge" is appropriate for it.
Today we're adding four amazing members to our group, so I feel as if we can really do this. However, the real challenge starts now. Until now this challenge has all been on paper, but next we have to make it a reality. I think that probably without a breakthrough or two we still won't be able to do it. Yet I believe that by combining our strengths, we can achieve these breakthroughs and get an 18m robot to move.
If Gundam is a story full of dreams and ambition, then we can make something as simple as that CG! Such a spirit of trying becomes the foundation for thinking about things in a realistic way. That's why I truly, truly believe that this is something we can do.
Developing new models during wartime, and turning them into reality on the battlefield, this kind of work, this example that I gave, it's a bigger fiction. Thinking that we can do this, that we can defeat a country by doing this, that's not something to be praised, that's just a pack of lies.
We're in an era where we can use technology to fake things to make them work, but from an engineering perspective, it's absolutely ridiculously difficult to make a human-shaped machine move. But when we achieve this, practical technology will actually be developed. From that perspective, I believe that this project is ripe with the possibility of a breakthrough. It may look like we're just playing around at first, but I think that it is a wonderful thing to be able to do this kind of play in this era where peace reigns in Japan. With new participants, if we can get some more concrete ideas, and at least make a Gundam that can stand up, then let's see it happen. For me at my age, this is what I am really looking forward to.
The way that it's made to move, that could give rise to the people who come up with the next great thing. Those watching us, there could be among them the children who come up these things. They might tell you to quit trying to solve such a foolish problem. But to get us to think in various ways, I think it's terribly important to show people to make these things real. So I very much look forward to working on this with all of you.