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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."
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...
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*
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
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.