Last year Kawasaki presented what was still a futuristic concept, the four-legged robot horse capable of carrying an adult on its back, traversing extreme terrain and moving with agility in environments where traditional vehicles simply cannot reach.

His name is Corleo, in the presentation video, almost entirely in computer graphics, the Corleo appears galloping over rock, jumping ice shackles, crossing snowy landscapes, dark forests and mountainous terrain, all while maintaining balance, stability and control while transporting a human being.

At the time, many people treated it as marketing hype, a concept that was too pretty to be true, it really is, and, after all, Kawasaki itself was talking about something ready for production only around the year 2050, but something changed, or someone really liked it, as Kawasaki officially confirmed that it began actual development of the Corleo decades ahead of schedule.

The company created a dedicated team with a clear objective, to present a functional prototype already at Expo 2030 in Saudi Arabia and more, the goal is to put the robot horse on sale around 2035 and it will not be powered by gasoline or a traditional battery, but by a hydrogen energy cell, this is no longer a distant promise, it is an industrial timeline.

According to Kawasaki itself, the Corleo was not intended only as a futuristic toy or an adventure vehicle, the company openly talks about real applications, also announcing the development of a piloting simulator, allowing users to learn how to ride the robot horse before it even physically exists.

A detail that shows how seriously the project is being taken, you have to see it, because the skepticism is still more than justified, achieving the level of agility shown in the videos is not going to be easy, maintaining dynamic balance with human load on irregular terrain with real safety is one of the biggest challenges of modern robotics and no one knows exactly what that 2030 prototype will be able to do in practice.

As this project matures, the world is seeing humanoid robberies, dancing, fighting, running, manipulating delicate objects and learning on their own, quadruped robots are already traversing rough terrain with ease, working in rescues, exploring mines and even herding animals and although it still seems like fiction, the question is no longer whether the technologies or robotics will really be possible, but where these futuristic machines are going to really fit.