Nov 27, 2010 11:58 GMT  ·  By

Thinking that batteries don't get as much attention as they should, Panasonic decided to show off what some of them can do by having them power a robot while it traveled across Japan.

Robotics have been their own branch of science for a very long time, and it seems that one of them has now been used for something more or less unusual.

Basically, Panasonic created the EVOLTA robot with the specific purpose of using it as a sort of test subject in one of their latest experiments.

The company wanted to show off just how long its AA batteries could last, so they made the robot, gave it 12-AA batteries and sent it on a trip.

One might think it would have been easiest to put the robot in a spinning wheel, the same as that used by hamsters, but Panasonic went much further than that.

The EVOLTA does seem to be inside a wheel of that sort, only it is not suspended. Instead, it was actually used to take the green thing on a very long trip across Japan.

Panasonic said that EVOLTA could manage to cross a distance of 500 km on the power provided by just the aforementioned batteries.

Sure enough, the small thing and its team of EVOLTA Sisters left Tokyo together and headed for Kyoto.

Said sisters were to make sure that EVOLTA did not travel by rain and were also meant to carry it over stairs, among other things.

The rest of the time the robot used to cross a distance of 500 km, which is the equivalent of 317 miles, all the while following a vehicle.

The vehicle in question belonged to the EOLTA sisters and had an infrared signal that kept telling it where to go.

The whole trek took two months and was even finished ahead of schedule, or so it is revealed.