Tao Xiangli, a 37-year-old inventor from Beijing, China, has spent over 150,000 yuan ($25,000) and more than 11 months building a functional robot made of scrap parts and wires bought from second-hand markets.
In China, Tao Xiangli is known as a DIY genius, with a collection of amazing home-made creations under his belt. Three years ago, he made headlines in international media after building a submarine all by himself, and today he’s back to with another impressive achievement – a 496lb (225kg) robot he pieced together in his small Beijing apartment. “He’s ugly, but he’s kind of awesome,” Tao said about the 2.1-meter-tall metal behemoth that can apparently perform simple movements and even mimic human actions by using infrared rays.
It can turn its neck, raise its legs and even shake hands at the flick of a switch on the board located on its back. Instead of crating a humanoid casing for his robot, Tao Xiangli decided to leave it “naked”so viewers could see every one of the over 110 scrap parts and 3,000 lengths of wiring required to make it work. To make it easier on the eyes, the young Chinese inventor fitted his robots with strips of bright neon cabling.
Tao Xinagli is just one of the many DIY geniuses in China. Over the years, we’ve featured lots of other crafty individuals, like the farmer who built a whole army of home-made robots, the guy who pieced together a real-life Transformer, or the inventor who created an Armageddon-proof survival pod.
This is an amazing accomplishment and shows what you can accomplish when you are dedicated to a project. Using scrap parts and wires to make this robot had to be challenging.