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R2D2 Beer Getting Machine
defectorg writes "R2-D2 Interactive Astromech Droid is coming to us this summer.
Equipped with innovative speech recognition technology, infrared scanning technology and working sonar navigation, this R2-D2 recognizes 40 spoken phrases, plays six exciting games, and sings three tunes. It even has a retractable arm that lets it hold a 12-ounce beverage!
Now this would be a nice thing to hack wireless lan iinto, let it notify new mail, read news and most important, ~/bin/let_r2d2_get_a_cold_beer_somehow.pl."
combine C3PO and R2D2 together and you got yourself a wife.. beer getting robot + bitchy robot = wife :-)
I want a R2D2 that has a "Bring me Natalie Portman" option.
"Chances of RHIC-induced Armageddon are exceedingly rare, but... you never know." - MIT Physicist Bob Jaffe
If only it was a little bigger, maybe 2 or 3 feet tall... then it would have enough room to stick the base of an iMac in his head with a nice 17" flat-panel screen sticking out the top, nice GUI, BSD under the hood, 802.11 built in...
Ahhh, someday I will build my own droid. Then...uhh... phase 3: Profit!
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
"With its rich heritage, an incredible fantasy, and gripping story lines, Star Wars is the ultimate property on which to base a toy line," said Brian Goldner, President of Hasbro's U.S. toys group.
:)
Its a good thing that someone's staying on top of these news breaking events! There's rumors that action figures might be popular too. Better look into it!
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
How can they offer high-caliber infrared and sonar capabilities at this price? I'd imagine that the licensing (for the Star Wars name, likeness, etc.) is accounting for a good 33% of costs... do, basically, 60 dollars for efficent and "sophisticated" abilities? Either they're losing money or misrepresenting the abilities of Mr. D2.
to find a way to write 20,000 lines of code to preform a task as simple as walking to the fridge...
Ultra-secret rot13 message: i just wasted a few seconds of your meaningless life :)
Thanks
Not that it doesn't address a wide variety of technical issues.
and technology should be fun
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Do I get a real Kenny Baker, too????!!!??
I want to know when they're releasing the beer-fetching Princess Leia.
beep beep BEEP bebeep BEbebeBEEP
No, he didn't mean to insult you.
BZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzt
R2! You don't have to vaporize him just to make a point.
BEbebeBEEP bebeep BEEP
Fine! Fine, you two work it out on your own. I'm outta here.
*whistle*
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hehe, I'm waiting for C3P0 to come out, so I can introduce him to my 33oz 29" Aluminum stress reliever*. I'm sure he'll like it.
Most. Annoying. Droid. Ever.
*also known as a bat. Comes in a variety of sizes and shapes, even made of wood! Bonus!
Sent from your iPad.
IIRC Nolan Bushnell was developing a similar robot in the early 80's. And at the time it's ONLY selling point was the ability to fetch beer.
Subverting the meta-moderating system since 2003
~/bin/r2d2_fondle_genitals.pl
This sounds to me like too little, too late.
Robots like this one (and much more sophisticated) have been sold in Japan since at least 1985. I bought a semi-autonomous robot back in 1987 dubbed Kikuzo that recognized 8 spoken phrases, was configurable to recognize its owners voice, played games, and was able to pick-up and release small objects. Very cool. The robot cost me about $100.00 at the Beverly Centre in Beverly Hills, at a store that specialized in Japanese gadgets.
Kikuzo is fully programmable and it acts/reacts to voice commands. Its cordless "microphone" used a 9 V battery, and the 25 cm. tall robot itself runs on four 1.5 V C batteries. It features:
Check out this guy's page for infos: http://www.geocities.co.jp/HeartLand-Gaien/6415/ki kuzo.html -- the page is in Japanese, but it has lots of pretty pictures.
While this is sort of cool, I would expect this R2-D2 to be a quantum leap over my trusty Kikuzo. We even "dissected" Kikuzo for one of my computer engineering classes (logical design) in the university (and later put him back together). We defined a cordless interface so you could program and command him from a PC (MS-DOS -- this was back in late 1988).
Granted, R2-D2 has a richer vocabulary than Kikuzo, but both respond to voice commands and play games, etc. I don't see myself spending money on such a limited R2-D2 since my Kikuzo would probably kick its arse. Offer me something as sophisticated as Aibo and then we'll talk. Meanwhile, Kikuzo even has collector's value.
Cheers!
Ehttp://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
... it'll end up in the closet once I get a gf. Unless she's one of those feminist types that thinks I should get beer on me own. Oh well, none of us can really be that picky.
I would rather have a bender robot with a small refrigerator inside that hatch he has. That should keep the beer cool and nice during the day.
Then again, R2D2's bleeps are probably nicer to listen to than Bender's neverending sarcastic comments. And he'd probably drink all the bear himself.
Do you remember the Omnibot and Omnibot 2000? I see this thing going the way of them. Though early on, I see them selling well. Heck, with a sub $100 price tag, you can't go wrong. But I am sure the novelty will wear off soon enough.
RonB
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
to programme ALL your remote controls into its Infrared system and then voice activate everything! (TV, VCR, DVD, PS2, AC... ).
:-)
The next thing to do is hard wire an IR reciever in to the wife's brain so she'd finally do as she's told! Then she can get the beer...
ys
-- "To ask a question is to show ignorance; Not to ask a question means you'll remain ignorant."
The R2-D2 Interactive Astromech Droid is ... 15-inch-plus ... packed with spunk .... answers to your call and obeys your
commands.
mmm, packed with spunk, and obeys your command. take note ladies!!
Remember the Sail Barge? Jabba had it right! R2's only meant to serve drinks!
"R2! Get me a beer! What?!?! Coors?!? You know I only drink Guiness!"
Of course, I'd need him to come with a built in Ewok-shocker too. Those damn things are always getting into the beer. You have got to have defenses against drunk ewoks. It's not a pretty picture.
Required background reading for this /. story: the late, great Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore's Gallegher
series of stories. (You may remember the authors from such sci-fi classics as The Twonky or All Mimsy Were The Borogoves.)
Although I'm afraid I've given a punchline away just via the pointer here...
Probably.As someone who has been involved with a company developing a new toy and attempting to work with Hasbro (and their only competition)on something "new", it will be interesting to see how good this is. From our experience Hasbro's marketing direction will be to totally minimise useful technical features and max up on promoting a particular line, be it StarWars, Lincoln Logs or some other highly marketable theme. What they wanted at the end of the day was a poor cousin of what was proposed. They simply didn't want a toy with smarts (good luck Creature Labs, been there, done that) or one that was radical with features link wireless links, unique and evolving personality or enough RAM (let alone FLASH RAM) to do somehting useful with. Just look how far Furby has evolved since it's big hit, or those other crappy "Techno" clones. New development and improvement has decreasing returns and is hard work, especially once the novelty wears off and there's competition from the next movie/cartoon series.
And BTW, the raw material cost, including plstic body, motors etc, is about 10% of final on-shelf cost. It's amazing how cheap some of these bits of electronics are in volume.And don't forget the sweat shops they are assembled in.
Cool, so this is what Creature Labs is up to. I've been meaning to check up on the company ever since I read Steve Grand's book, and now I know what he's up to. For those who don't know, Grand is an AI researcher who wrote large chunks of the game Creatures, which is an AI game where you raise these animals, Tomogatchi-style, and they interact with their world.
He left to work at Creature Labs, and I guess R2 is one of their big things. With his experience, I'd imagine that R2 has very well done AI, and might even show some hint of a personality beyond simple beer-fetcher, which befits the "real" R2 that we all know and love.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Well you are not the first who thinks r2d2 is best used for serving dirnks. Jaba did just this. And look what happend to him.
/. with all its attention to r2d2.
The replubilc caomes to a a downfall. and they use r2d2 for ship mechanics. what happens to the repuclic.... right: downfall.
wonders what happens to
Watch R2D2 video demo
I want them to make a C3P0 model. With it understanding 6 million forms of communication, it's only a matter of time for 3P0 to decipher all those SlashCode Perl modules I've been trying to understand.
Then 3p0 tells me that the modules are really written in Brainf*ck. That's okay. 3p0 can decipher that for me too.
But for now, I'll pay to have r2d2 use its electric circuits to shock random people who come to my doorstep. That'll teach'em a lesson for making fun of my Star Wars lunchbox!
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
This could be a case of life imitating art. Somehow I get the feeling that this little R2 lookalike will be the launch pad for actual R2 type droids. If there is sufficient robotics research into this, they may turn something like this 'can with wheels' into something that can serve drinks, take food orders, etc.
It always seems that progress is found in the most unusual places: Porn Industry -> DVD.
Maybe the toy industry will yeild a whole slew of useful robots in the next 10 years or so.
Did they remove the video? I can't find it...
You know that commercial where the guy has the hawk that gets him beer? He tells it to get him a beer, and he doesn't know where the beer comes from. Meanwhile the hawk is terrorizing downtown restaurants getting the beer... I can see the comedic potential in the same thing happening here:
Robot comes back, a little dusty, one of the wheels is squeaking, holding a frosty cold one. Pan to the outside world, there's a robot-sized hole in a Semi, cars turned upside down, police cruisers arriving on scene, and a minority guy standing outside of a liquor store with smoke pouring out of the broken front door.
Moral: beer is worth any price.
Synergy is your friend
I was in fifth grade in 1984. The oil boom was still going here in Texas at the time and there were a lot of families in my neighborhood with ungodly amounts of money. Anyway, this kid down the street had a robot unlike anything I've ever seen. It was about 3 or 4' tall and had a b&w screen (looked similar to a TRS-80 Model ]I[, if you know what I'm talking about) for a face. Under the screen, it had several rows of buttons and stuff, and a little 12-button keypad, kind of like a phone. Below all this was, of all crazy things, an Atari 2600. Besides doing normal "robotty" things, this robot could play a few select 2600 games and would generally beat you. As I recall, this robot had an arm on the side that had little pincers that could pick up some things. It could also carry a little drink tray. It had some sensors that enabled it to move around objects and you could program it to move around the room at preset times. If I recall correctly, this kid had the robot set to wake him up every morning.
I've always been curious about this robot. Does anyone know the name of it?
I often found it odd that he didn't talk since he could play sounds in recordings just fine. He must have had some DSP capabilities or something. More importantly, he had the understanding of languages of all sorts. I think he just chose to beep instead.
A cassette player can play sounds, but can't talk. A mute can hear and understand languages without being able to talk. If you think about it, it makes a great deal of sense to build a robot that can recognize speech, but there's not much point in it talking back if its only responses will be things like "acknowledged" and "done". A few simple beep codes are much more efficient.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
That is the droid I'm looking for!
~jeff
Man, I always pictured R2D2 as a foul-mouthed repair droid. Some of his beeps even sound like angry versions of the "censor" beeps.
and I claim my five pounds
--
E_NOSIG
It's possible that R2's "speech" had no literal correspondence with a human language. It might be too abstract/robotic. Maybe that's a major role of a "protocol droid" (c3po) - not just to translate, say between italian and english but to translate low-level geekspeak into something humans would care about.
So if R2 could talk English, he might say things like (execution-path-blocked (holoplay (tail 84% current-file)) (accessory-hardware restraining-bolt)). Which would be as useful to Luke as a bunch of bleeps and whistles.
It's amazing, the difference one missing hyphen can make.</grammar flame>