# AT\-AT Mechanics & Interior How the AT\-AT walker from Star Wars moves on four legs, from its hip and knee joints to its cockpit, troop deck and why it can topple\. By Anthony Reks Topic: Stories & Mythology [Open the interactive Jig](https://ask.jig.com/j/yKpHZTKMhdz3) ## Transcript ### 1. A walking giant In the Star Wars stories, the AT\-AT is a giant walking tank\. It stands about 22\.5 metres tall, as high as a seven\-storey building\. Let's find out how it walks on four legs, and what it carries inside\. AT\-AT stands for All Terrain Armored Transport\. Drag the scene to look around\. ### 2. One foot at a time The walker lifts only one foot at a time\. The other three stay on the ground and make a steady triangle, so the heavy machine does not tip over\. Elephants walk in a similar careful way\. The filmmakers studied elephants to animate it\. Its top speed is about 60 km/h on flat ground\. ### 3. Hips, knees and feet Each leg swings from a big round hip joint on the side of the body\. Motors bend the knee and ankle to lift the foot, swing it forward and set it down\. The wide round foot spreads the weight so it does not sink into the snow\. Each foot is about 4\.5 metres across, roughly the length of a car\. ### 4. The head is the cockpit The head is the driving cabin\. A pilot and a gunner sit at the front windows, with the commander just behind them\. Two big laser cannons hang under the chin, and two smaller ones sit on the sides\. A crew of just three drives the whole walker from up here\. ### 5. A bendy neck A flexible armoured tube, the neck, joins the head to the body\. It lets the head turn to look around, and the crew can walk through it to reach the body\. Press the button to make the head look left and right\. The armour is thinnest at the neck, so it is the walker's weak spot\. ### 6. The troop deck Most of the body is a big hall for passengers\. Up to 40 soldiers ride on benches on the upper deck\. When the walker stops, they slide down cables from a rail in the ceiling to reach the ground\. Here the 40 seats are shown as four benches of ten\. ### 7. Power and speeder bikes The lower deck holds the machinery\. Fusion engines, a kind of power plant, drive the legs, with fuel tanks behind them\. At the back, a garage carries five speeder bikes, fast hover bikes for scouts\. Star Wars books disagree on where the garage sits\. Here it is on the lower deck at the back\. ### 8. Tall, strong, but tippy Thick armour and great height make the AT\-AT hard to stop\. But a tall machine on long thin legs is easy to trip\. In the Battle of Hoth, rebel pilots wrapped a tow cable around a walker's legs until it toppled over\. Later walkers in the stories were built lower and wider to stay steady\.