Mech Warrior

May 10, 2005

Cassey Ressler/Valley Life editor

Like a proud papa, Wasilla resident Carlos Owens watched as his baby took its first steps last weekend.

While parents are proud of their baby's first steps, not too many toddlers stand 18 feet tall and weigh a ton and a half. Owens' baby does. In the back yard of his Wasilla home, Owens is building an enormous "mech," the only one of its kind in the world, and after years of hard work - and some serious cash - the project is nearing completion.

"I always thought it would be the coolest thing to build one of these, so I did it," Owens said. "I built it because I can."

So what exactly is a mech? Officially, it's a "Bipedal Exo-Skeletal Robotic Vehicle," named NMX04-1A. Unofficially, it's a big, bad-looking machine that appears capable of massive destruction, something you'd expect to find in a video game or a science-fiction movie and not in the back yard. An operator stands inside a "caged" area, operating the mech's legs and arms, effectively creating a massive, metal extension of the operator - with two arms, two legs and a head. Its extremities are all controlled by hydraulics, and the mech itself is powered by an 18-horsepower Briggs and Stratton engine.

"It is very user-friendly," Owens explained. "Whenever I move my arms, its arms move. Whenever I move my legs, its legs move. It's like a huge person in a powered set of armor."

Owens points out that it is a "mech," not a "robot."

"A robot has AI (artificial intelligence), but the mech doesn't. It's operator-controlled."

Initially, Owens started working on the mech with the hopes he would be able to take it to Alaska Raceway Park this summer, with the mech able to pick up and crush vehicles. While Owens had entertainment in mind, there are plenty of real-world applications for a mech - yet nobody has built one.

"There are a lot of potential for mech to be used in military applications," Owens said. "And I believe it could be a great tool for firefighters. You could send the mech in and put out the fire from the inside when it wasn't safe to go in with a person."

Building a mech isn't cheap - Owens says he has $20,000 invested in the project. He has found donors for the mech construction, but a bulk of the money has come out of his paycheck.

"I'm thankful that there are people out there who have an open mind and are willing to support this project," Owens said. "But mostly, it's been money out of my pocket."

Owens started from the ground up, learning as he went. Since no other mechs are known of, finding information wasn't exactly easy. He talked with experts on a variety of subjects, such as hydraulics, and put their information together in his mind.

"I'd take what they told me and figure out how I could apply it to this monster," he said. "Nobody can really tell you how to build something like this, you just have to do it."

He started the project in 2003, and has been working steadily ever since. He said that while building the mech has proved to be frustrating at times, he never considered scrapping the project.

"There are a lot of people who would have gotten to a point where something didn't go right, and they give up and then kick themselves later for not finishing it. Life is full of those kind of people, and I don't want to be 'that guy,'" Owens said. "This monster is a labor of love."

It's a labor of love that has garnered a lot of national attention. The project is described in detail at Owens' Web site www.neogentronyx.com, and in late December, a national reporter with cnet, a technology Web site, took notice.

"I had the Web site up for three years and got 7,500 hits. In the couple months since then, I'm up to 300,000 hits," Owens said.

The mech has been featured in numerous national stories, including a recent blurb in FHM magazine. The Web site has frequent updates, and visitors who have posted messages are spread around the country. Through the national coverage and the Web site, Owens has developed quite a following.

His unofficial fan club is waiting for the day the mech starts taking big leaps. Last weekend, the first steps covered four inches of ground before a cable broke, forcing Owens to start tinkering some more.

When NMX04-1A is complete, there will most certainly be a second mech built, Owens said.

"I'd love to start all over from scratch with this one, because now I know what I need to do to be successful," Owens said. "For this one, I'm going to be doing test walks and proof of concept stuff, but you can't have just one mech. There will be more."