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"The robot's processing is divided among six (with room to grow) commodity PCs running RTLinux. One to handle balance and locomotion, another visual processing, the third diagnostics and watchdog, the fourth planning and mapping, the fifth dexterous manipulation, and the sixth, coordination, watchdog and safety. Most of the design (except the goal planning and mapping) is behavior-based.

The main boards are sealed in a shock-box in the chest cavity to keep the muck out and shock isolate the critical components. All critical software is run off solid-state drives for safety. I wouldn't want a hard-drive crash make the robot fall over."

Just look at it. It's *dying* to conquest!

"The robot's processing is divided among six (with room to grow) commodity PCs running RTLinux. One to handle balance and locomotion, another visual processing, the third diagnostics and watchdog, the fourth planning and mapping, the fifth dexterous manipulation, and the sixth, coordination, watchdog and safety. Most of the design (except the goal planning and mapping) is behavior-based.

The main boards are sealed in a shock-box in the chest cavity to keep the muck out and shock isolate the critical components. All critical software is run off solid-state drives for safety. I wouldn't want a hard-drive crash make the robot fall over."

Just look at it. It's *dying* to conquest!

no, but this one can catch running cars
http://www.r50rd.co.uk/research/internal/v2i/engin /videos/stop_test.htm

Not if they call this guy...

Check out thissite.

It's part of an elaborate BWM Mini advertising campaign, posted on /. before.
The animation is pretty good though. I thought it was real at first glance.

In the video, it is a bit unsturdy, I hope the guy piloting it doesn't get sea/car/motion/robot sickness easily.
Looks like it uses wheels in the feet to move around (interesting that it can pivot without having to reposition the feet). That design decision reduces the types of terrain available to traversing, though.

Reminds me a lot of the Mini Cooper "robot". I'd be suprised if the Land Walker were fake, though... it's just too imperfect. :)

I love the progress of science. I want a real Steel Battalion vertical tank! (awesome game, btw)

This link: http://www.r50rd.co.uk/research/internal/v2i/engin / was floating around a few newsgroups last year, showing videos of a robot with fairly amazing capabilities. Here's the Usenet discussion (comp.robotics.misc, "Robot built from a Mini Cooper?") where I first saw it:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8 &c2coff=1&threadm=14f6fe8.0403090913.81e3f13%40pos ting.google.com&rnum=1&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dmini%2Bc ooper%2B%2522Is%2Bthis%2Bfor%2Breal%2522%26hl%3Den %26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26selm%3D14f6fe8.0403090913. 81e3f13%2540posting.google.com%26rnum%3D1

As I (posting as "Ben Bradley" [should I go ahead and put my real name in my profile now?]) say in my posts, the videos appeared quite impressive at first viewing, but were easy enough to see the problems and deconstruct upon repeated viewings with a critical eye.

A search of earlier stories shows Slashdotters spotted the video's fakeries as well: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/09/222227 &tid=159

The point being that these algorithms for detecting fakes may indeed work well, but I don't see them as being a monumental thing that "We Are Now Able To Detect Faked Photographs" but rather an incremental thing, that uses a computer to verify what we can already find out with a little probing and [knowledgable!] common sense.

I'm betting the owner of ilovebees.com is in on it, probably just an in-joke with some of the halo developers, maybe they know the guy or something.

According to the whois record ilovebees.com was created on 14-JUN-04, so the entire site might be fake like that Mini robot thing a while back

That looks pretty cool. But does it even compare to this robot?

It's a bit bizarre that you can't see any webpages, but you can still download the movie files using direct links.

I just came across a reply from the creator regarding its authenicty on Google Groups:

From: Chris S. (123@123.com)
Subject: Re: Robot built from a Mini Cooper?
View: Complete Thread (9 articles)
Original Format
Newsgroups: comp.robotics.misc
Date: 2004-03-11 13:08:35 PST

I'm not so sure. I really want to believe this thing's for real, but I
have some serious doubts. Here's the response I got from Colin Mayhew,
the robot's inventor:

Colin Mayhew wrote:

>I can assure you that the Cooper project is a real and
>very tangible one. Your suspicion is perhaps
>understandable because the leaps we've made are rather
>significant compared to the current state of
>commercial AI. As Mr. Clarke wrote in Technology and
>the Future, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is
>indistinguishable from magic." What's important to
>remember in this famous quotation is not that the
>technology becomes magic, but rather that technology
>seems magical only to those who don't understand the
>details or are not knowledgeable of the history of a
>technology's development. It's for that reason that
>I've placed notes online and have included videos from
>different stages of the project. Have you seen videos
>of people interacting with the Kismet robot? That
>robot uses a fairly simple emotional model, yet people
>bond to it and treat it as a 'living' creature! It has
>become something magical from bits of aluminum and
>electrons whizzing inside silicon. Your experiences in
>the research sector I'm sure have shown you how
>disconnected the public can be from the realities of
>technology. There are autonomous machines (be they in
>medicine or oil well drilling) so removed from our
>daily lives that when we finally learn of them, we are
>shocked and amazed---far more so than had we followed
>the gradual steps and wrong turns the engineers made
>developing and finessing the technology. This project
>is real, and it, and the systems I've developed for it
>are going to change the way we live our lives. The
>most recent software revision I've tested on the robot
>has some powerful reasoning capabilities, a large step
>more powerful and versatile than that employed on the
>robot when I recorded the videos you may have seen
>online. They are perhaps powerful enough to seem like
>magic, but both devil and the angel of creativity are
>in the details. Soon enough, these little creatures
>will be animating the robots all around us and making
>our lives safer and more fulfilling.
>
>Regards,
>Colin
>
>
> --- "Chris S." wrote: > Is your
>Mini Cooper powered robotic biped a real
>
>>project? Your site
>>seems detailed enough, but the videos look
>>suspiciously like computer
>>generations. Either way, it's an entertaining feat.
>>
>>Sincerely,
>>Chris S.

Take it for what you will. I just can't believe someone built something like that essentially alone in just a few years. It just does too much and it moves too fluidily. For instance watch the video where it stops a run-away Car.

try this http://www.r50rd.co.uk/research/internal/v2i/engin /