Everybody, at some point, has wanted to be a Pokémon trainer. Unfortunately, that’s just not possible outside of video games, but one YouTuber has found a cool compromise: a Jolteon robot.
Bringing to life one of the original game’s “eeveelutions”, robotics expert Dave Niewinski created a robot Pokémon. While it won’t allow him to travel the regions of Kanto, Hoenn and more with a team of powerful pocket monsters, it is still very cool.
Posted to the Dave’s Armoury YouTube channel, Niewinski revealed his Jolteon robot to the world. But how did the YouTuber create the electric Eevee evolution? (No, he didn’t give an Eevee robot a thunder stone.)
In the YouTube video, the robotics engineer built the Pokémon on top of a Unitree Go1 Robot Max. For reference, the robot dog costs over $5,000 when it’s not on sale.
Afterwards, Niewinski found an STL file of the Jolteon Pokémon online. The YouTuber then scaled the model up to fit the robot before splitting it up into enough pieces to 3D print at Jolteon’s life-size scale.
After sanding, filling, priming and painting, long and arduous process, the YouTuber had created what everyone wants: a life-sized Pokémon.
As it turns out, the YouTuber’s work is phenomenal, perfectly matching the look of Jolteon from the games. While the robot Jolteon does walk funny and can’t zap anyone with electricity, it’s an adorable use of robot dogs. (Much better than strapping weapons to them, anyways.)
After everything was said and done, the YouTube dressed in an Ash Ketchum Kanto cosplay. The best Ash costume.
“I had a tonne of fun doing this project, but it was actually a lot harder than I thought it was going to be,” he said. “There were a tonne of little details that I didn’t even think of until the end. If you watch channels like NerdForge or Adam Savage, they make it look so simple! But that’s just years of experience.”
At the time of writing, Niewinski has less than 20,000 views. A Pokémon Master like this surely deserves more!