FOUR-LEGGED DRIVE

Hi-tech walking car can rescue victims in disaster zones...

IT is the ultimate runaround – a car with legs.

The Hyundai Elevate will be able to scale walls, climb stairs and reached trapped casualties in disaster zones, its designers claim.

Plans unveiled yesterday show how each of the vehicle’s four wheels is on an extendable leg, enabling it to walk and clamber when necessary.

Hyundai showed off the Elevate at the world’s biggest technology show and claimed – aptly given its resemblance to the AT-AT from Star Wars – that it could one day walk on Mars or the Moon. The lightweight legs, which will probably be made from aluminium or magnesium, will bend at the knee, ankle and hip level.

So as well as scrambling over rocks and through streams helping save lives after an earthquake or hurricane, it will be able to climb stairs to pick up or drop off elderly and disabled passengers.

The designers say there could be different settings, allowing the car to walk like a four-legged mammal, a reptile or a human.

The reptile setting, a similar walk to that of an alligator, would be the most stable because the leg movement is slow and deliberate, they told the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The Elevate will be able to weave around crushed cars or fallen trees, operate in deep snow and pull itself out of a ditch.

Afterwards, the legs tuck back in to allow the seven-seater car to be driven on the road as normal.

Because it is in the early planning stage, Hyundai does not know what materials will be used for the Elevate’s shell.

Vice president John Suh, head of the firm’s innovation arm, said the technology to create the car exists. However it could take some five years to develop the concept and its capabilities fully. ‘We are going to push the boundaries of what it means for a car to have robotic legs on the wheels,’ he said.

Designer David Byron said: ‘no other vehicle can climb a 5ft wall, or step over a 5ft gap, or put its tyres out 15 feet wide, all while keeping the body and the passengers completely level.

‘I like to imagine that one day we will send crew missions to the Moon or Mars and when that day happens, the Elevate will be a fantastic way to... discover those places’.