Man Turns Everyday Items Into Complex Exoskeletons Inspired by Popular Robots

Known as the “Brooklyn Transformer”, Peter Kokis has become a very recognizable figure in New York, thanks to an arsenal of impressive robot exoskeletons made out of all sorts of everyday items.

A former military pilot, Peter Kokis started making his now-famous exoskeletons after joking around with an ex-girlfriend. At one point, during a conversations, she told him “you’re too stiff, you need to loosen up and do something weird,” and he decided she was right. Using his experience in aviation, he started piecing together things he had around the house into an impressive exoskeleton that became known as Squid Boy. But that was only the beginning, as over the years he made wearable costumes inspired by the likes of The Transformers, The Terminator or the Xenomorphs of Alien.

The Brooklyn-based performance artist builds his robot suits out of 100 percent recycled materials, sometimes salvaged from actual trash. Some include random items like can soup strainers, egg slicers, toilet paper holders, or kitchen drains, but you couldn’t tell by looking at them, they are that well put together.

“I actually use my experience in aviation to build my robots,” he told Pix11. “So I make them redundant and I make them modular so I can upgrade them.”