A cool, the Kawasaki Corleo, who is actually not a motorcycle: presented at the latest Expo Osaka-Kansai, is a futuristic quadruped vehicle designed for off-road mobility, such as moving on a tiger robot. It has a 150 cc hydrogen engine, each leg is independent and has non-slip clogs, it can move on any ground, but above all it has a very advanced man-macrine interface.
How to drive? Through the movements of the pilot’s body, with sensors installed in the handlebar and in the brackets that detect weight movements, in short, you enter symbiosis. Among other things, to move at night, Corleo also projects bright markers on the ground.
Corleo’s design (the name seems to make one think of a lion, but it looks more like a robotic wolf, a cybernetic version of the divine wolves of the Ghibli studio) recalls the walkers of Star Wars (do you know the AT-T?) In the mini version, or a mechanized version of the animals ridden in the Mandalorian, or a retro-furious vehicle from Mad Max. Can you buy? No (apart from who knows how much it would cost, but someone like Elon Musk could only take it for whim commissioning it to Kawasaki), but Kawasaki is carrying out, that’s how it imagines the mobility of 2050, and does not just imagine it: it makes us see what is already possible to achieve.
The only thing we cannot do, if not in heavy versions and with limited autonomy, is the fluctuating skateboard, that is, the overboard of return to the future 2. But who knows, in one way or another, that will also arrive. At the moment the direction of the next few years, between AI, robotics and global conflicts, I would say that it is very cyberpunk.