Two years ago, Yamaha set out on an ambitious adventure: to create a motorcycle riding robot that can ride a motorcycle as fast as one of the greatest motorcycle racers of all time, Valentino Rossi. Besides being a solid PR stunt, the development of Motobot brings with it some seriously powerful technology and insights into one of motorcycling’s great mysteries: rider dynamics. With a machine the is capable of replicating human inputs on real-world motorcycles, Yamaha can improve its breed, both on the street, but also on the race track. Now, the Japanese firm (with help from its Californian subsidiary) is just about ready to show us the results of its head-to-head matchup between Motobot and Valentino Rossi, but first it wants you to guess the results.
If you didn’t catch the hint in Leon Camier’s interview with us (for our A&R Pro subscribers), the British rider…
Yamaha has a bevy of tech that it plans on displaying at the Tokyo Motor Show later this month, and one of the more intriguing world premieres is the Yamaha MOTOROiD concept. A futuristic take on the motorcycling condition, Yamaha’s MOTOROiD seems to be part motorcycle and part pet dog, with the two-wheeler able to recognize its owner and interact with them, like a living creature. This is because the Japanese brand boasts that it will use artificial intelligence to bring people new experience of “Kando” – the Japanese word for the simultaneous feelings of deep satisfaction and intense excitement that we experience when we encounter something of exceptional value. The concept is certainly an interesting take on how humans interact with their motorcycles.
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