Posted by
emmett
on from the more-expensive-robots dept.
adamy writes "Seems that a Japanese firm is selling a robot that gives backrubs for the low low price of $47 G." Products like this make the Aibo seem like a bargain.
power source: Ni-Zn battery (1.5 hours of continuous operation)
Controller: - joy stick controller for fingers (w/ force feed back) = 4 controls x2 - arm control = 6 controls x2 - head control = 2 controls - wheel control (pedal type) = 3 controls - network = PHS (64Kbps PIAFS 2.0) - display = headmount display
Price: 5,000,000yen
Aging Demes, Wealth and Robots
by
Baldrson
·
· Score: 3
Japan has a problem similar to some demes in the US:
Aging demographics.
At some point, someone is going to have to pay for a lot of domestic servants.
The earliest boomers, like Clinton and cohort, caught the real estate boom of the 1970s. I put the catastrophe point for birth year in the early 1950s, possibly as early as 1950 as speculation from the GI generation anticipated the demand from boomers. Swelling real estate values combined with inflation-depressed real wages in the 1970s and scarcity of entry-level jobs to make being born before 1950 a very shrewd business move (fixed mortgate rates hit 19 percent in 1981 and being a fresh-out of college system level programmer for a major computer company paid around $17,000 in the late 70s.).
The earliest boomers caught this wave, built by their younger siblings, but the largest beneficiaries of all the "eat the boomers" hysteria were the GI generation real estate speculators that liquidated the savings and loan system. The largest wealth transfer in history is now occuring as dying GIs naturally favor their shrewd eldest children among the boomers. After all, they did demonstrated the business savvy, depth of character and wisdom to be born before the 50s.
This means the Clinton/Gore cohort are going to have a big gob of money as they approach retirement.
As they near retirement, these the earliest of boomers will be more and more interested in domestic servants. Whether they'll be able to put up with a mere machine rather than a living, breathing human to dominate is the real question. They did, after all, develop a taste for bossing around huge numbers of boomers who seemed to need it so much (so screwed up they couldn't land a job that could pay for a house and a family -- birth control pills and abortions were far more affordable, the way the GIs and earliest boomers did.
I don't have Sony's market research division at hand.
So, perhaps the Japanese are playing a game of offering strange toys like this "massage/errand boy" robot as a means of feeling out how much of the earliest boomer/GI-legacy gold mine they can grab with machine lackies.
The Japanese need pervasive automation even more than the aging US population because the Japanese are less willing to import labor from other nations. Grabbing the gold with these expensive toys may be the way they finance real automation technology that they desparately need.
According to the pressrelease the robots is mainly controlled via a remote control (or PC).
This demonstartes one of the major problems of robotics to date :
Robot Navigation in umodified environments.
Lots of research goes into the area, but self localisation in an umodified home environment, where lots of obstacles exist, some of which keep moving around (i.e. humans, small furniture pieces, etc) is still a big problem.
The same goes for the use of robotics vision. Yes there are some clever schemes to use stereo cameras(to estimate distance) for object detection and avoidance and some help in landmark recognition, but it takes a lot of processing power and is only mildly reliable. Identifying specific people without major constraints (i.e. person has to face the robot from a certain angle without moving) is AFAIK also not reliably possible.
This are the rasons why at the moment all "proper" (i.e. learning, and not remote controlled or having hardwired complex behaviour) commercial robots are toys. If your AIBO moves in the wrong direction, runs into you, or doesn't manage to fetch its pink ball, nobody will complain it doesn't work properly, people will enjoy it, and find it highly amusing.
Reliable, intelligent, robot servants are still a long way off, but my guess is that they surely will exist in 20 years or so and most likely they won't look anything like humanoid at all...
BTW, for anyone interested there is the COG project at MIT, doing research into a humanoid robot, it is VERY impressive.
Take a look at some of the videos to see what they are already capable of. Especially the head demos are impressive.
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/cog/video_index.htm l
Slashdot Mirror
Here are some links after quick search on the net.
l b iztech/prom/92259
Sorry, only in Japanese. But you should be able
to check out some pics on their site.
Tmsuk Inc. was incorporated by Thames Inc.
Tmsuk Inc: http://www.qbiz.ne.jp/tmsuk/
Thames Inc: http://village.infoweb.ne.jp/~thames/index.htm
Images of robot: http://www.qbiz.ne.jp/tmsuk/image_data/tm4_04.htm
NikkeiBP's article: http://biztech.nikkeibp.co.jp/wcs/leaf?CID=onair/
Additional info on this robot.
size:
length - 750mm
width - 600mm
height - 1,200mm
weight - 100kg
# of joints:
head - 2, hip(?) - 1, arm - 7x2=14, hand - 3x2 = 6
mobility:
two individually controled wheels
front and rear supportive wheels
max speed 3km/h
visual:
250,000 pixel CCD camera, horizantal view angle, 114 degrees, 10 frames/s (w/ current PHS setup)
voice:
4 voice (whatever that means)
sensors:
# of proximety sensor - 5
power source:
Ni-Zn battery (1.5 hours of continuous operation)
Controller:
- joy stick controller for fingers (w/ force feed back) = 4 controls x2
- arm control = 6 controls x2
- head control = 2 controls
- wheel control (pedal type) = 3 controls
- network = PHS (64Kbps PIAFS 2.0)
- display = headmount display
Price: 5,000,000yen
Aging demographics.
At some point, someone is going to have to pay for a lot of domestic servants.
The earliest boomers, like Clinton and cohort, caught the real estate boom of the 1970s. I put the catastrophe point for birth year in the early 1950s, possibly as early as 1950 as speculation from the GI generation anticipated the demand from boomers. Swelling real estate values combined with inflation-depressed real wages in the 1970s and scarcity of entry-level jobs to make being born before 1950 a very shrewd business move (fixed mortgate rates hit 19 percent in 1981 and being a fresh-out of college system level programmer for a major computer company paid around $17,000 in the late 70s.).
The earliest boomers caught this wave, built by their younger siblings, but the largest beneficiaries of all the "eat the boomers" hysteria were the GI generation real estate speculators that liquidated the savings and loan system. The largest wealth transfer in history is now occuring as dying GIs naturally favor their shrewd eldest children among the boomers. After all, they did demonstrated the business savvy, depth of character and wisdom to be born before the 50s.
This means the Clinton/Gore cohort are going to have a big gob of money as they approach retirement.
As they near retirement, these the earliest of boomers will be more and more interested in domestic servants. Whether they'll be able to put up with a mere machine rather than a living, breathing human to dominate is the real question. They did, after all, develop a taste for bossing around huge numbers of boomers who seemed to need it so much (so screwed up they couldn't land a job that could pay for a house and a family -- birth control pills and abortions were far more affordable, the way the GIs and earliest boomers did.
I don't have Sony's market research division at hand.
So, perhaps the Japanese are playing a game of offering strange toys like this "massage/errand boy" robot as a means of feeling out how much of the earliest boomer/GI-legacy gold mine they can grab with machine lackies.
The Japanese need pervasive automation even more than the aging US population because the Japanese are less willing to import labor from other nations. Grabbing the gold with these expensive toys may be the way they finance real automation technology that they desparately need.
Seastead this.
It's too bad the article didn't have a picture, so here's a link to one. Just imagine those arms massaging your back....mmmmm.....
According to the pressrelease the robots is mainly controlled via a remote control (or PC).
m l
This demonstartes one of the major problems of robotics to date :
Robot Navigation in umodified environments.
Lots of research goes into the area, but self localisation in an umodified home environment, where lots of obstacles exist, some of which keep moving around (i.e. humans, small furniture pieces, etc) is still a big problem.
The same goes for the use of robotics vision. Yes there are some clever schemes to use stereo cameras(to estimate distance) for object detection and avoidance and some help in landmark recognition, but it takes a lot of processing power and is only mildly reliable.
Identifying specific people without major constraints (i.e. person has to face the robot from a certain angle without moving) is AFAIK also not reliably possible.
This are the rasons why at the moment all "proper" (i.e. learning, and not remote controlled or having hardwired complex behaviour) commercial robots are toys. If your AIBO moves in the wrong direction, runs into you, or doesn't manage to fetch its pink ball, nobody will complain it doesn't work properly, people will enjoy it, and find it highly amusing.
Reliable, intelligent, robot servants are still a long way off, but my guess is that they surely will exist in 20 years or so and most likely they won't look anything like humanoid at all...
BTW, for anyone interested there is the COG project at MIT, doing research into a humanoid robot, it is VERY impressive.
Take a look at some of the videos to see what they are already capable of. Especially the head demos are impressive.
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/cog/video_index.ht
Frank