Meet Tradinno, the world’s largest, walking robot who also happens to be a fire-breathing, blood-spewing dragon of death and destruction. Okay, the death and destruction part is hear-say, but the rest is true. Tradinno is 51-feet long and almost 30-feet high with a 40-foot wingspan. The dragon robot was built by Zollner Elektronik AG, a German electronics maker, and was designed to star in a 500-year old folkplay called “Drachenstich” in the Bavarian town of Furth im Wald.
In the recently released Guinness World Records 2014 book, Tradinno was named as the world’s largest walking robot. That’s no simple feat when you consider the entire contraption weighs in at 11-tons. The robot is driven by a 2.0-liter turbo diesel engine with 140 PS, which allows it to lumber along throughout the play. As for mechanics, the whole robot requires, “Two hydraulic circuits, 220 bar high pressure and 80 bar low pressure, 272 hydraulic valves, 65 animated axles and 238 sensors, combined with 300 meters of hydraulic lines, 1,300 meters of electric cables and 110 meters of pneumatic lines illustrate the sheer magnitude of the complex mechatronic system,” according to Zollner.
Tradinno, which gets its name from a combination of “tradition” and “innovation, has seven degrees of mobility per leg, so it can walk around corners and move sideways at a maximum speed of 1.8 km/h. It uses bi-directional wireless data transmission via four control unites to avoid the jerky “robotic” movements often associated with large-scale designs.
Throughout the show, the robot dragon is capable of spewing 21 gallons of stage blood and spitting 24 pounds worth of liquid gas turned fire. The wings are made from polyurethane and glass-reinforced plastics skin to allow for a dragon-like look.
At the end of the day, Tradinno has a specialized dragon-transporter with its own 2.0 liter turbo diesel engine to bring the beast to its next performance. Check out a video below.