Robots are all around us, but we normally don’t see examples larger than the rare service robot or vacuum robot. However, many gigantic robots are out there, if you know where to look.

Let’s take a closer look at six of them.

The Tsubame Archax

While not exactly a Gundam robot, the Archax is a manually operated robot from Japanese company Tsubame. It’s 4.5 meters tall, weighs 10 tons, and has a top speed of 10km/h. It was designed for heavy-duty work and costs around $3 million.

The Archax is a one-seater robot controlled by a system consisting of two joysticks, two pedals, and a touchscreen. An operator stays aware of their surroundings with four displays and nine cameras.

Tsubame Industries CEO Ryo Yoshida wanted to showcase Japan’s expertise in “animation, games, robots and automobiles.” Clearly, the Tsubame Archax combines all of these successfully.

Les Machines de l’Île

What’s better than one robot, you might ask? The answer is a gallery/theme park with multiple huge robots. Some of them are also rideable by visitors.

Les Machines de l’Île’s Galerie Des Machines, located in Nantes, France, houses robotic attractions, including Ariane the Spider. Ariane is about 13 meters tall and 20 meters long, but that’s not the only robot you can find there.

Astérion the Minotaur is even bigger, standing 14 meters tall and weighing 46 tons. If you’re lucky, you might even get to control him while riding. François Delaroziere is the brains behind these and more giant robots.

Unitree GD01 Chinese company Unitree unveiled its latest upright walking robot earlier this year. This bipedal walker weighs about 500 kilograms and stands three meters tall. You can buy it now for 3.9 million yuan, about $572,000.

While the GD01 is normally bipedal, it can also get down to all fours, achieving a quadruped configuration. According to the company, it was designed for civilian transport, and it can switch modes to traverse challenging terrain, if necessary.

Patania II Global Sea Mineral Resources (GSR) designed the Patania II subsea vehicle to mine manganese from the ocean floor, rated for depths of 4,500 meters. This sea robot weighs 35 tons.

Not much else is known about Patania II, as it’s a prototype being tested. However, it has failed pilot tests twice, once in 2019 and in 2021. Fortunately, the company recovered it successfully.

Yangshan Deepwater Port

What if the crane isn’t the only automated part in a seaport? Huawei has been working on the world’s largest automated port in Yangshan, Shanghai. This port has 18 terminals, and six automated double-arm gantry cranes are undergoing installation there after delivery as of September 2026. We unfortunately don’t know the dimensions of these new cranes.

We won’t count the entire port as one robot, but you’ll get to see many giant robots there if you ever have the chance to visit.

Rio Tinto AutoHaul The Rio Tinto AutoHaul autonomous train is the world's largest robot. This huge robotic creation is 2.5 kilometers long and consists of three self-driving locomotives and 240 cars. After years of tests, it successfully hauled 28,000 metric tons of iron ore 280 kilometers away. During this time, a Rio Tinto operations center in Perth supervised it.

Rio Tinto and Hitachi Rail STS began collaborating in 2006, culminating in the 2018 autonomous test. Development cost almost one billion dollars.

What’s Next?

Giant robots are more common than most people realize, but many of these aren’t easily accessible to the public. Even so, some concepts we see in science fiction movies and anime are edging ever closer to reality.