Fulfill Your “Impulse to Move”! Behind-the-Scenes Story of Kawasaki’s Futuristic Mobility Concept Showcased at Expo 2025

The Company began to think about participating in Expo 2025 at a time when people around the world had been experiencing the inconvenience of the behavioral restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Against this background, a decision was made to enter the “Transportation and Mobility” showcase category, and discussions began with an exploration of the possible key features of transportation apparatus able to support a sound future society.

Today, traveling even a relatively long distance is an ordinary activity for many people, unlike the hazardous venture it was during the Age of Exploration. Recently, it has even become possible to choose not to visit the target destination physically at all but to have a similar experience from home, and to do so for more and varied purposes. That said, many people continue to go on trips seeking thrills and enjoyment, and we seemingly never lose the desire to go traveling somewhere. We took notice of this apparently irrationally persistent and universal desire to move, began to look for explanations, and encountered the key term “impulse to move.” We also learned about the scientific theory stating that humans are predisposed to derive happiness from the act of moving.

While studying the term, we noticed the possibility of approaching the impulse to move, which is essentially never fully satisfied, by offering a completely new mode of transportation. That was how we began to consider plans to organize the exhibition with the theme of fulfilling the “Impulse to Move.”

CORLEO could be described as something like a “high-mobility multilegged machine.” The highlight of its design lies in the adoption of legs. This was the answer to our quest to offer a novel ride experience, something that would be impossible if we had used wheels, as that kind of design has been too overdone to allow for any sense of novelty. Moreover, existing two-wheelers have strong off-road capabilities for getting air and powerfully traversing rugged mountains, but riders need to have high maneuvering skills and the risk of taking a tumble is almost unavoidable.

As a motorcycle manufacturer with a long track record, we looked at taking an unconventional approach to overcome such limitations of two-wheelers by removing their defining feature―the wheels―in order to expand the possibility for offering a “fun to ride” experience. And we considered employing legs instead, which could at least make the vehicle look more stable.

Our exploratory endeavors regarding the overall concept resulted in the four-legged off-road vehicle CORLEO, which avoids using wheels by adopting legs as a way to improve the general safety of its off-road performance.

After deciding to go with four legs, we then. looked at the design in terms of speed capacity and reviewed a number of suggestions. One was to try and achieve the world’s fastest performance, a record we set for the motorcycle, using the world’s fastest land animal, the cheetah, as a model. Rather than the cheetah, however, we eventually settled on the lion as a performance model, determining that it was better suited to allowing the rider to maintain postural balance as well as also evoking the image of barreling across the landscape astride the king of the jungle.

What could be controversial is the misleading impression created by the vehicle’s appearance. Due to its structure of four legs supporting a body, the thing inevitably looks like an autonomous robot, which it is not. Rather, CORLEO is a means of mobility and is distinctively characterized by its function of enabling the rider to derive enjoyment from actively engaging in its maneuvering. We redesigned the styling repeatedly to make it look more like a piece of transportation equipment.

CORLEO is also unconventional in terms of the maneuvering system. By design, the vehicle is maneuvered by the rider shifting their weight, so controls like accelerator and steering grips have been omitted. Instead, it is equipped with a handhold and stirrup-like structures. This system thus represents a uniquely innovative design concept that combines functions of the motorcycle with those of horse riding, for which we have filed multiple patent applications.

To determine the riding position, we conducted an experimental survey with cooperation received from the equestrian club of Kobe University. Survey participants rode the full-size mock-up and reported their feelings about the experience. Furthermore, we adopted a sort of swing arm mechanism that is similar to the standard function on a motorcycle in order to allow the rider to enjoy a broad range of motion and maintain a stable riding posture.

The name CORLEO is coined from the words “Cor Leonis,” another name for Regulus―the star Alpha Leonis― , which is a name associated with the lion, the key inspiration for the design of the form. It is thus also suggestive of the ancient practice of travelers using stars as a guide to find their way, and reflects the team’s shared sense of commitment to creating mobility solutions for fulfilling the human impulse to move.

We began by looking into issues associated with ongoing mass transportation service systems with the objective of identifying factors that inhibit the impulse to move. Major issues identified as likely to occur were related to stressful situations like changing trains during rush hour or with bulky luggage or strollers and mobility-impaired passengers taking long-distance trips involving a transfer, as well as difficulties with arranging work schedules to take leave for multi-day travel.

The ALICE SYSTEM is designed to resolve all these issues in a single stroke. Our plan is to create mass transportation systems that eliminate the need to engage in stressful transfers and to provide a stress-free, comfortable passenger experience with the aim of enabling people to fulfill their impulse to move, no matter what their personal attributes or background. We are proud of this outstanding concept, which has only been made possible by capitalizing on the expertise Kawasaki has developed while engaging in the three mobility sectors of land, sea and air and is the result of a comprehensive examination of practicability.

One of the key characteristics of the ALICE SYSTEM lies in its ability to support the overall travel experience. The system recommends appropriate plans in response to user requests, such as wanting to go on a boat trip or explore scenic routes by rail. This can also provide users with a bit of a push, particularly the less-experienced travelers.

Seats in the passenger cabin are equipped with robotic concierge programs developed by applying industrial robot technologies to provide finely tuned customer service. The robot concierge can prepare drinks and offer other forms of hospitality. Network connection and videotelephony are also a standard feature to provide a comfortable environment to passengers who need to work remotely.

For power supply, we have employed our hydrogen power generator O’CUVOID, which can be refueled by simply replacing the hydrogen tank. In the ALICE SYSTEM, the power supply system has been designed to have O’CUVOID connected to multiple units to be able to augment power output while also allowing each unit to be removed in case of a problem to enable easy maintainability.

Kawasaki’s Group Vision 2030 describes the vision the Group is aiming to realize in 2030, with a focus on the three fields of “A Safe and Secure Remotely-Connected Society,” “Near-Future Mobility” and “Energy and Environmental Solutions.” The key technology for each field is related to robotics for remote control; mobility for enriched lifestyles; and hydrogen as a highly anticipated clean energy source.

For Expo 2025, the target year of the envisioned future society is set as 2050, which is 20 years ahead of that set in the Group Vision. By that time, we anticipate that hydrogen-powered robotic and mobility functions will be an essential part of public infrastructure, so we have decided to express the theme of fulfilling the “Impulse to Move” by leveraging the unique strengths of Kawasaki in implementing technology in the three fields of robotics, mobility and hydrogen.

One of the most important policies of our showcase is to use life-size displays. CORLEO as well as ALICE Rail and the ALICE Cabin will appear in full-scale dimensions to produce a sense of reality. As one of the up-close experience opportunities offered in our exhibition, visitors can look right inside a cabin docked to a train car.

Moreover, we have prepared a set of downloadable “Impulse to Move” logos, which are available for free from the dedicated site. We hope that lots of people will download whichever image they like and customize it by itself or by combining with other images and thus have a positive experience with our “Impulse to Move” project even if they don’t attend the Expo 2025 venue. We believe CORLEO and the ALICE SYSTEM, two distinctive creations that only Kawasaki could produce, will leave their mark on the history of the world exposition movement. We invite you all to visit our exhibition and check out our offerings first hand.