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Sanyo Announces "Banryu" Home Security Robot
Fooferaw writes "From the Sanyo web site: Sanyo and smaller tmsuk announce the next version of their "Banryu" home robot shaped somewhat like a dragon (it has the shiny curves of an AIBO, IMO). The Banryu can walk 15m/min., hear, sense in the infrared, and apparently "smell" a fire in the home. It even transmit real-time video." Corrected: The title initially said Sharp...I must have Zaurus on the brain.
Although the press release was not specific on exactly what sort of home security functions it would perform, I would think that it's speed would limit it's use. A 15 m per minute (.9 km/h) could easily be out walked by even the most unfit of people. This would seem to make it fairly useless in any sort of roving intruder detection system.
My other sig is funny!
the base model doesn't seem to have a lot of bite to its bark... but unlike a real dog you might be able to mount a backpack rocket launcher like that dog shadow from the centurions.
On the other hands, real k9s these days can carry body armour, so I guess things might be looking up for organic hounds.
I still don't understand the fascination for Robots in Japan.
It is obviously part of the japanese culture to contemplate a robot as an ideal solution for this sort of problems and that serious money is invested in reaching that goal. It's also clear how that is not the case in western cultures, just look at the amount of "Funny" posts on this topic.
Now if I would be contemplating having one I see two big problems right away:
-How is it really going to navigate in the mess I have in my appartment, hell I can't.
-How is it supposed to stop intruders when this robot is the single most expensive thing I have in the house! (I bet is not cheap)
The only explanation I can come up with is that is yet another toy for the japanese high class.
IMHO
Hell, this thing can do 1 thing I can't... SMELL.
I was blessed/cursed with a lack of smell. One day a PC started smoking in my room and I had no idea until the smoke alarm went off on the other side of the house (the one on my side was being replaced).
Now if only they could add instrumentation to this thing to smell old-clothes, shoes that walked in dog sh!t, etc I will no longer be handicapped.
Don't work on robot locomotion, do you?
There are no truly dynamic non-planar walkers right now, and just adding sensors doesn't fix the problem; it's still extremely difficult. The nice thing about a quadruped is that the walk doesn't necesarily need to be feedback based (Oscillator designs are nice but they have yet to yield a practical 3d walker). The main problem is still actuator strength (as postulated by the MIT leg lab), not really balance or sensors.
That said, I'm not so impressed by 15m/min. We managed to get Sony Aibos to walk at 13m/min at about one fourth the scale of this thing. Our code is available for people to develop using the OpenR SDK (see https://www.openr.org/page1_2003/), so you could make your own security bot for ~$1500 instead of whatever this thing costs. It doesn't have a nose, but I guess you could always just keep the batteries fresh in your smoke detectors...
My dog is a freakin genius. He never barks at anything but strangers and kills everything smaller than him that gets into the house. Never had a fire but he came and bugged me once till I realized I had left the oven on. Sure, a robot doesn't crap in the yard but it also doesn't care about you. Call me old fashioned but technology just can't replace some things. Lets see that piece of crap catch a frisbee
If you don't say anything, you won't be called on to repeat it. -- Calvin Coolidge