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Robots!
i4u writes "Sony introduces at the Robodex 2003 it's new version of the humanoid Robot SDR-4X.
The Sony SDR-4X was introduced last year.
The new version SDR-4X II has improved movement functions, safety functions and conversation capabilities.
The new speech processor supports continuous speech recognition with about 20,000 words.
The Sony SDR-4X II is about 580x190x270mm in size and weighs about 7kg. Sony Japanse Press-Release. See also the new robot Toshiba announced - the ApriAlpha."
how much - me want! :)
with a headline like Robots! who wouldn't want to read? 10 out of 10 for marketing.
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How long before these robots are given fluid motion and balancing? I wouldn't so much care if the robot could walk if it could balance itself in a shifting environ.
Seems much more humanly adaptable that way.
On a related note, Honda's Asimo is touring the US. Asimo groupies you know who you are.
Is it just me, or does "The Sony SDR-4X II is about 580x190x270mm in size and weighs about 7kg." Not sound very sexy?
Something about those measurements...
Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, how I love it. - Gen. George Patton
in Japanese, right? in which case (if we count kanji characters) is a LOT.
btw japanese is a pain in the butt compared to english - I think if the robot really manages conversation in japanese, english is cake. Why I say that? most spoken japanese has no subject, object, and ususally can be interpreted in multiple ways based on context.
lastly, notice all the humanoid robots go around with slightly bent knees. whassup with that? anybody know? I go around with a bent knee because I am bow-legged, but I hardly think the sony robot has that problem.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
For fighting off those evil ninja pirates! This thing does have laser eyes and gatling guns mounted on each arm, right? With an option for the shoulder-mounted rocket launcher? Or am I thinking of a different robot?
...and it is Sony!
$DEITY bless $NATION
Don't forget to buy robot insurance! "To protect us from the metal ones".
My ultimate dream toy was this big room that had a balcony, in the room would be a scaled down fort, jungle, river, etc... Then, we'd have these little guys that had guns and we could remote control them to fight and have wars and all kinds of cool stuff. Kind of like Rainbow Six, minus the computer part, and scaled down.
::sigh::
Anyway, these new thing got my hopes up, until I realized that it doesn't even look like it can fire a gun.
Why the hell would you make a robot that can't fire a gun?
Let me take that one step further, if you are designing a robot, why the hell would you not just give it guns as hands.
It better know karate.
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
This would get 10 for it's gee-whiz cool factor, but a 1 for being utterly useless for over 99% of humanity.
A Fatal OE Exception has occurred, Sig will now reboot.
The new speech processor supports continuous speech recognition with about 20,000 words.
Yeah, I'll show it 20,000 continuous words... I usually fade away after around 17,835 continuous words or less. Say A-men, brothers!
Seriously, it's a good listener. I think I'll get one for the girlfriend, and I can have a nice break.
Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, how I love it. - Gen. George Patton
Interesting that from a nation that loves its giant battling robots (as seen in every other anime series from Japan) there is enough desire on the part of the manufacturers to create such robots in real life. And that there is enough demand there to make it worthwhile. They wouldn't be able to make these things if they couldn't sell them; You wouldn't be able to get the vast majority of North Americans to shell out a couple thousand on these things or an AIBO for instance. I'm a geek and I think these are cool but you won't catch me buying one until it's smart enough to get a job and make money to pay for itself. So why do the Japanese love these things so much? Any thoughts?
there's a similar write-up at tubgirl tech archive
Slashdot 's editors are dickheads
This... is a robot!
Build Your Own Crow T. Robot
Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, how I love it. - Gen. George Patton
Genom, boomers, and the Silky Doll pop up now?
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
In no time we can compute its average density: 7000/(58*19*27) = 0.235 g/cm2, and deduce that attempting to get rid of a plastic wrapped Sony SDR-4X II unit by dumping it at the bottom of a lake wouldn't work without the help of a heavy brick.
Like we don't get enough war-news overload, you have to come and post this completely off topic rant in here... What the hell does that have to do with robots?
Go post this in a proper forum somewhere, or better yet, take your post, turn it sideways, and pound it up your ass!!!!
Much like the human kind...
Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, how I love it. - Gen. George Patton
I want a robot to help me recite lines from "All Your Base" Like.. Me: What happen? Robot: Someone set up us the bomb!
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I hope they offer a SDK to developers, and that it would be free, or at least low cost. I meen the more apps that use their robots the more they sell right?
During such 'actions' as the war in Iraq, your fancy home robot, with GPS, will be reduced to having a spatial accuracy of 100 meters, not one. You might want to buy a unit that uses sonar and domestic region mapping, in addition to any GPS capability.
hmm. peachy
until you want to express "the faster the better" (does not translate literally, at ALL), "I bumped my head while entering the bath" (as far as i know there is no expressing for "while entering," as any japanese equivalent to english versions mean "while bathing"), or interpret "yorushiku" or "sumimasen" in their million and half meanings.
and I havn't even begun to count the thousands of "sound the exact same" words. a simple example might be "kanji," which, depending on the "kanji - chinese characters" can mean "kanji - feeling," or "kanji - work." try differentiating them.
I cannot imagine anybody who knows japanese well to even have a thought that japanese is easy to parse. AFAIK french is easy to parse - but I am sorry Japanese is far from it.
oh, and I counted 9 different "requesting somebody to do stuff" politeness levels the other day, not counting multiple politeness level combinations (verb + politeness suffix + request / command + politeness suffix for the request). Japanese people themselves hardly can differentiate which one is more polite than the other.
lastly, since all kanji characters have different meanings - you can more-or less guess the entire language if you have a sense of what every kanji means (this is why chinese people can usually understand what's going on in a japanese newspaper). so 20k words vs 20k kanji is very much different.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
give it up, Asimo
The worst terrorist attack in recorded history
The atrocities committed against the innocent civilians in the World Trade Center (killing approximately 3,000) pale in comparison to the atrocities committed by the Axis powers of World War II against innocent civilians of certain ethnic groups (killing well over six million).
and you people have the gall to be discussing robots????
If you don't like the topics discussed on Slashdot, then don't visit Slashdot. If you want to talk politics, there are several other sites for that.
Go away troll.
Will I retire or break 10K?
However, I believe Grandma's poodle can be protected quite easily. Thank god for small miracles.
does this robot follow the 3 laws ?
take a coin. shear it to cover about 1m^2. Now, will it sink? Why?
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
make a female robot and post an ad on /.
;)
it'll be sold out in 2 minutes
58cm tall? I'm still not seeing how this is going to help. Maybe keep elderly people company, but couldnt do anything for them physically.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
God created humans.
Humans created robots.
Robots will create _____?
And isn't it something how humans strive to be like God (ie creating life), while making robots to be more human (Short Circuit and AI come to mind too)? What will be like the robots? Probably whatever the robots create.
-Look lively. LOOK LIVELY!!! --Mr. Shmallow
We can say "Danger will Robenson, Danger" 5000 different ways
Me so horny, me love you long time... Prease to insert credit card.
They could win some serious awards for this buddy, especially with the UCOSA's premiering this year! Lets hope they get nominated!
But see, that can't be it, because if they were soulless, they wouldn't love anything.
(and yes, soulless has 2 l's, I looked it up)
Sony is introducing a new robot, but this is only part of the story. Sony is betting its future on robots. Sony believes robotics will be bigger than the computer industry in 30 years. And there are many other robots coming, in hospitals, in New York steam pipes or on the battlefield. Look for example at Elvis, designed by Pyxis, which carries medications, or the future Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' Wakamaru, a home caretaker for the elderly. Check this column for more details or read this Newsweekarticle.
You see, this cowardly bunch refused to fight honorably by marching in straight lines towards the enemy lines and stopping once in a while to exchange fire with him. Hell, that's what the real soldiers would do. Instead these bastards hid in forests, moved around and used what we now call guerilla tactics.
Its online just try reloading the site a few times. I think they are still working out the bugs actually.
Can I have sex with it? If not I'm not interested :D
This is the 21st Century dammit! I want my cars to fly, and my robots to be sex slaves!
Like Asimov's three laws of robotics?
Go here to create your own Slashdot dis
Until it comes with the Jet-Jaguar theme song, standard.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Robot schmobot.
I was promised a flying car. Anyone up for a class action law suit against "Popular Mechanics"?
Read reviews of shopping cart software
Ok, let's get straight to the facts.
We have the technology to make a robot think, computers. We have the technology to create the *way* a robot thinks, programming. We have the technology to dress it, and paint it and make it look cute.
We even have the technology to make it move.
BUT, we don't have the technology to make it look *natural* both in the looks and the touch.
You may think I'm making a lough, but I'm god damn serious.
We need more technology in the venue of robotic movements and materials it is constructed from, than programming, 20000 word ravings and such.
True, programming of such things may be pain, but at least we *can* do it. Make it look extremely natural and feel natural at a touch, it's not something we can do yet.
(yes, I know this brings thoughts about female robots and rest bs, but to make something usefull that has to move around your house it must look natural, I don't want a fridge going aroung my room)
I'll be interested in getting a robot when it can transform from a jet to giant mech and comes standard with gattling cannon and official Robotech drunken missiles.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
starphish writes "Sony introduces Robot Frank, it's new version of the humanoid Robot Ron."
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The story is a dupe, the topic is boring, the facts weren't checked. WE GET IT!!
looks like the time is on the horizon when instead of lugging around laptops and mobile phones our prinary computer will walk loyally behind us all day. Stick a touchscreen in its belly and browse the internet fullscreen on the train - of course you'll have to pay for 2 seats (holy cow - imagine the i,pact on trafic cogestion if bums on seats had to double). Overall what with robots and the new tech i'm developing the next decade is gonna be an interesting period to be alive :^)
Before adopting WHATWG, read the moonlight.NET EULA [http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx]
Yes.
Because I dropped it in thin side first.
It can sing and dance... hopefully soon it will be able to play baseball, bike ride, and go for hikes so I will have more time to slave away at my meanial labor.
That volume is the smallest rectangular prism that will hold it, not the actual volume of the robot. Looking at the pic of the robot, it is much smaller than 1/4th the size of such a box, so it would be denser than water. Damn, you're fucking stupid. The best thing we could do for humanity is tie a lead weight around your neck and dumb you in the lake.
If I had one, I'd program it to recognize my friends. Then if one of them said something mean about my girlfriend, I'd tell my robot, "Say hello to [name].
The robot would then proceed to the violating friend, begin humping his leg, shouting, "I LOVE YOU ORGANIC MASTER!"
But that's just me...
The new speech processor supports continuous speech recognition with about 20,000 words. ...will it dance if I start singing "Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto..."?
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
without the fun of drunk monkeys
It sounds like a new PDA.
So, how many contacts can it hold?
Scratchy: Kill
Humans: Do not hurt
--
My sometimes helpful blog
...robots are outlawed, only outlaws will have robots.
I recently saw "Robots!" on Modern marvels on the History Channel. Most of the modern robots such as the one seen in the Honda commercial "Asimo", the Sony Robot in this article, KizMIT (who looks like a Jim Henson reject), and another famous pattern recognizing robot were all on the show.
I heard the Sony CEO say at the MacWorld Expo in a conference that he thinks that robots are the future of Sony. They will carry everything electronic in the house and do everything electronic in the house. he says they will have projectors for our TV, be our wireless basestations, transform and be our "Segways" - he even used a minicon from Transformers Armada to illustrate that he sees all this within 30 years.
To tie those two stories together. the History Channel had the leading Scientists in Robotics comment on the future. They came to a consensus that we wouldn't even have something remotely close to R2D2 in 100 years and C3Po in 200 years and Rosie from the Jetsons in 300 years.
I think companies like Apple will lead the way for innovation and consumer appeal/design/functionality of robots for the consumer.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
I want a robot that cleans my bathroom - cleans the shower tiles, cleans the floor, picks hair out of the plug and does that hard to reach bit round the back of the loo!
Show me one of those for the price of a Dyson and I'll buy! It could be a little roaming sucker that returns to the sink to 'wash out' and 'soap up' every now and then.
Could scare the crap out of you if you forgot about it and got up for a night time whizz!
Control Program Supplying media 16MB Memory Stick
/.'er will avoid it.
It uses memory stick so it must suck and any decent
Did anoyone else feel sad after looking at the picture of the group of Sony SDR-4Xs? They already have them looking like N'Sync! Damn Japanese popculture.
Trying is the first step towards failure.
I'd really love to have 10 of these little guys, But.
;-)
1. Only Bill Gates or someone similarily funded cound afford to ever have this..
2. It's short 58cm tall.
3. The old version, on a full charge lasted 20 mins... hopefully fuel cells or micro turbines will solve this problem.
What I'd really like is a whole army those these guys, only I'd like them to be 6 feet tall and strong enough to do construction work! We could put cute little construction hats on them! Oh wait, I've been watching the animatrix too much
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
... do they use their powers for good, or for awesome?
A household robot would not even use GPS. GPS has no data on obstacles, home furnishings, or even the lay of the land. Expect collision sensors and imagine them like a bat's sonar chirp/hearing system.
Doesn't look and feel natural? Let's see -- it looks like a robot and feels like a robot. AH, is it that it doesn't look and feel organic?
Take a look at some of the robots out there now. Insects, Canines, Egg-shaped, Humanoid, etc, etc. Hardly a fridge moving around the room?
We can hardly make it think, but we can make it process information in a particular fashion. We can build it bodies, though currently they are not disguised as humans. Maybe you're looking for more of a flesh-encased cyborg?
Give it some time.
Until robots achieve that level of verisimilitude, no one will mistake them for, er, um..."humans".
It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
Stick a touchscreen in its belly and browse the internet fullscreen on the train
Yeah sure, then paint it purple, stick a triangle on its head and spread nasty rumours about its sexual preferences...
Explanation? Point? Please
I don't care how smart it is or how cute it is - none of that matters if IT HASN'T GOT OPPOSABLE THUMBS.
No usable hands makes it a walking voice operated notepad and answering machine. Big deal.
Afraid not, ballbag.
have a look at Open Pino for anyone interested in a Free Software implementation of a Robot - as well as Free (as in speech) design.
Who would buy a "stop them at the router, stop them at the blah blah" (remember that quote?) product from Sony?
When will Slashdot editors learn to spell "its"?
How do you know? How many do you own? I'm imagining uses that aren't common now, and projecting forward. Soon, GPS will come in all cell-phones, cars, cameras, etc. Not hard to imagine it as a stock component for a household robot...even if it won't work indoors :)
The Iraqis are just defending their fucking country.
No, they're not, you fucking idiot. The few who are putting up a fight are defending the tyrannical terror-regime of Saddam Hussein. They're not defending Iraq; nobody is attacking Iraq. They're defending a socialist, Stalinist, totalitarian dictator.
You must have NO fucking sympathy for the Iraqi soldiers and partisans. NONE. They have made their choice: they would rather live under the thumb of a latter-day Stalin than live in freedom and democracy. They will be CRUSHED under the boots of the Coalition forces. The vast, vast majority of the Iraqis, something like 23-1/2 million of them, will be liberated and free to decide their own destinies.
What like:
Or do they mean no sharp edges for when kids try to lick it?sic transit gloria mundi
Damn, if you just want to talk a woman will suffice... err.. oh wait, this is Slashdot...
Save robots for the meaningful stuff, like battlebots and cool stuff like that.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
"But like most politicians, he promised more than he could deliver."
Still, considering all the fuel-cell articles that have been on /. recently, maybe we really *will* have robots that run on alcohol!
"Yes! In your face, Gandhi!"
You must think in Russian.
Teletubbies, you ignorant yokel. You been living under a rock?
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
PAK CHOOIE UNF
The sad thing is that my first reaction to this was "Hey, you don't need the ,1 on the end of that load statement, 'cause that's a basic program".
Ah! Thankyou. I thought he was aluding to the imposter: "Miguel de Icaza" trying to imply miguel was somehow gay or .... ? There is some cheeky bullshit in this fella's journal.
I didn't getit then, but I used to watch lots of teletubies buck in my student days. I remember one time being very stoned while watching one of the segments where they go into the TV screen where some kids were visiting a zoo. Anyways sudenly I discovered I had the power of premonition and was announcing to the room exactly what animal would appear next and what it would do "elephant, giraffe ripping at trees, kids feed llama, it spits at camera"- everyone was astonished at the accuracy even if these were repeats from way back. I was quite unnerved and upset and maintained I'd never really watched more than a few seconds of the tubbies before. Had a dizzy spell.
A week later I found out that segment of the show is shown twice in loop with hardly any gap. I'd picked all up subliminaly in a trance about 5 minutes earlier.
how offtopic was that!
By the way kids. LOL but drugs don't work - I was off my tits for two years and barely graduated. My brain was damaged, not good.
everything is not perfect spheres
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near
the earth's surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people
to do so.
-- Bertrand Russell
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