- For more than 400 years, the small German town of Furth im Wald
has had a Dragon Slaying Festival.
In the second week of August,
as they have done for years and years,
hundreds of locals will dress up in costumes
and act out the story of a heroic knight
rescuing his wife from a fire breathing dragon.
Which wouldn't normally be the sort of thing I'd cover,
except the dragon they're using these days
is definitely not four centuries old.
This is Tradinno.
It was completed in 2010.
[dragon roars]
And it's the largest walking robot in the world.
- Five, six hundred years ago,
the dragon was like a wheelbarrow, on two wheels.
After this time, there was a bigger dragon.
Inside of the dragon are two men.
These two men moving, running the dragon.
We had this until 1945.
And then this one, the people of Furth im Wald
built the first motorized dragon.
And inside of this car of this motorized dragon
were four men.
A driver, who don't really see where he's going.
Since 2010, we have our brand new dragon.
He can move naturally like an animal.
Our dragon is 11 tons heavy,
16 meters long
and five meter and a little bit high.
Its cost was €2.3 million.
The engine inside is 140-horsepower turbo diesel.
- A few weeks ago, I went to Nantes in the West of France
and I saw the giant mechanical elephant that lives there.
But that doesn't really walk, the legs aren't load bearing.
Instead it's supported by wheels.
This dragon, though, once it's out of the cave?
It actually, properly walks.
Slowly but surely supported only by its legs.
Which is a really big challenge for robotics.
Particularly when there's this much mass moving around.
Today is just a test day with locals watching.
But even here it has to move, walk, breathe fire,
and spray out stage blood, water today,
for when it's defeated.
All while the public are very, very close.
- Safety is very important.
So, the dragon always has to stay on three legs.
And our remote control's on side.
There's a little black box with a red button.
Everybody, from us, can stop the dragon.
Push down the button and the dragon stays.
With the remote control you can make the dragon movable.
And there's one controller just for walking the dragon.
The dragon goes forward, backward, left hand side, right hand side.
So he's very, very movable.
Then you have a second remote control,
just for head and the neck.
We have a third remote control for the face
and it's for the two different kinds of fire
from the mouth and from the nose.
And the fourth controller is mine. The cool one!
It's for the wings, for the tails and for the blood.
Then we have a fifth one.
This is for the little transporter.
He has 60 movable angles, with the legs, with the neck.
Just the tail alone has four different parts.
Computers adjust the walking algorithms.
So, when the guy pushes the joysticks in front,
he starts walking.
This is one sequence of four steps.
Everything else is hundred percent manual.
You have about 61 or 62 different sensors.
Down on the feet, a sensor.
So he's going, aha, there's the ground.
And his body, he has a big sensor,
so the computer knows where's the middle point.
It's a tricky thing.
You have hydraulic things. You have the engine.
You have the knight who's beating the dragon.
So, you have damage here, damage there!
So, you have to fix it always.
It's difficult, yeah.
The new dragon now, the target is way back inside
of the mouth of the dragon.
So, when the knight takes his spear and throws it inside,
and then I push the button and the blood comes.
80-litre tank inside has water, different red food colors.
Right here, now, we just use water.
When you use this mixture, water and this colored stuff,
it's a very bad smell, very bad!
- If you'd like to see the dragon yourself,
then you can come along to the festival in August
or through the summer months.
You can have a look at these smaller shows here
in the "dragon cave".
Not only is this a cool bit of engineering,
it's a great tourist attraction for the area.
'Cos if "400 year old Dragon Festival" isn't your thing,
then maybe spearing a giant fire breathing robot is.
Not that you get to spear the robot.
They have a guy to spear the robot.
- The future about spearing the dragon?
It's maybe what's possible. With a new dragon...
Dragon can fly or not, or hologram, or who knows?
The tradition of spearing the dragon is always the same
and will be the next, hopefully, thousand years.