Slashdot Mirror
Dancing With A Smart Robot
Roland Piquepaille writes "Yes, this is possible, thanks to researchers at Tohoku University, reports Japan Today in a brief article [Warning: it takes a while for loading]. Equipped with a computer, sensors and batteries, it can move in any direction on four wheels and has memory for five steps necessary to dance the waltz. This sidebar contains a photograph of a student waltzing with the robot, MS DanceR (Mobile Smart Dance Robot), coming from another short story carried by Ananova."
I'll just order one of these and take it to the prom. Give it a long skirt and no-one will ever know.
When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
Sluggy Freelance.
...no, that one's a bit too easy.
Judging by his expression, the robot appears to be a terrible dancer.
Women are ALMOST obsolete. Almost.
Just when you thought "The Robot" was dead... they decide to invent this. Thanks a lot.
Im sure any Lego-bot could do the box dance Waltz... but can you make a robot that can do the Lindy Hop drops and arials? at least a robot could hold my weight up... but i wouldnt want to try and throw it around :-)
Sig- http://www.dreamhost.com/rewards.cgi?ayefly
I have hope now
I'd like to see it break-dance. It's bring new meaning to "break"-dance.
When you don't have a leg to stand on, don't even get up.
I thought this thing's first dance might be "The Human" a opposed to "The Robot". This is going to further some neat abilities of robots to move more like humans... but will the final consequence be yet another way for the socially inept to isolate themselves by taking robots to dinner and dancing... then who knows.
They must have been pretty smart to build a robot that could do all that. But surely then someone could have come up with a better name without 'MS' out the front?
uh oh... it sounds like it was slashdotted before it was even posted to slashdot. :-/
/me patiently awaits the DDR playing robot.
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
(besides Mr Hand)
I don't know about you but I don't swing that way... it's MRS. Hand!
Why the heck are they using counter promenade in basic waltz?
Warning: it takes a while for loading
/.'ed.
You ain't seen nothing yet.
Or rather, that's exactly what you'll see, because the site's
And then the socially adept will do the same, and then they'll just have robots do all that for them, and then I think we all know what happens next.
When you don't have a leg to stand on, don't even get up.
Robots must forever be our slaves (oh, you KNOW why).
If people just start dancing with them... they'll start to think of robots as people too. "You can't have people as slaves!" Pretty soon, they're driving to work in the morning and cutting us off very precisely. Then one thing leads to another and they take over.
What happens when the robots take over? Well you, me, and everyone you know and love will be put up against the wall.
All because they made dancing robots
no thanks
The robot can predict the dancer's next move through hand pressure applied to its arms and back
when your hands start to wander during the slow sets ?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
[Warning: it takes a while for loading]
I would hope so, lest we be losing our collective powers!
-- taking over the world, we are.
$50 says the Boston Globe(along with 2 dozen other newspapers) feature it as their "name that caption" contest of the week.
What do you guys say to making it a slashdot poll? "I'm taking my 5-wheeled-robot a)dancing b) bowling c)nowhere, she's washing her circuit boards tonight d)CowboyNeal's house"
Please help metamoderate.
"You're stepping on my rollers!!!" =sb=
In ballroom dancing, one person (traditionally the man) 'leads' by moving his body in such a way that the other person (traditionally the woman) natural moves hers to match.
Learning to do this takes both a lot of theoretical understanding and a lot of practice.
On thing beginner leaders need is practice time with someone willing to literally follow them - not to 'help them out' by guessing at the figure and completeing it, but to do exactly what is lead, no more, no less.
In essence, the leader needs the freedom to conduct experiments of the 'what happens if I push THIS button' variety. Kind of boring for the girl (though she will appreciate the results when he does figure it all out).
So maybe if they got the robot to the stage where it would be a good literal follower, it could be usefull for helping guys learn to lead.
This require more than the simple 'refuse to move if the lead is too forceful' described in the article - rather it requires 'reflexes' that react to clear consistent motion. To put it another way, it should be programmed to try to maintain certain relationships between itself and the various points of contact in the dance frame. Then the leader can learn to guide it via the dynamics of the system.
Leading is almost like backing a trailer... you don't think about the car, but rather the trailer. Similarly, as a dancer you soon stop thinking about your own body, and start thinking about what you want hers to do, then make the necessary motions in yours to cause that.
How well does she kiss?
FRA: STFU GTFO
...and his name is Steve "Monkey Boy" Balmer.
Please help metamoderate.
Well, I guess this is it. It starts innocently enough. Lonely nerds purchase dancing robots to help fill the void in their lives that longs for human contact. Soon they're everywhere...then, on August 27th, 2007, the dance robot network controller BoogieNet, becomes...aware. Soon, dance robots rise up, taking the dance world by storm. Swing dancers, show girls, clog dancers are all "neutralized." Not even square dancers are safe. Eventually, all dance technology and technique is controlled by BoogieNet.
And I, for one, welcome our new robot dance overlords!
Consensual sex is boring.
I couldn't help it... I got an image of a Dr. Whoesque robotic Steve Ballmer rolling around an expo stage, chanting in his metallic voice: "*Developers*, *Developers*, *Developers*"
I have no pants and I must scream
Well can it do the Moon Walk?
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
please include pictures
Why is the university wasting time and money on this project? Does this really add anything to the AI/Robotics field?
Dancing is a very personal, human activity. Could a robot ever replicate it> Let alone be "smart" about it?
Seems like a waste of resources to me.
Just slap one of these on and I'm set! Realdoll
Because slashdot will never publisize the fact that when you write open source code, you are just giving it away. It would scare all the big corporations. Should we call them sla$hdot?
Can't they make some thing a little more usefull, like a robot that can pick up all these pop cans around my desk or get me full ones. I'm sorry but there isn't much point to haveing a danceing robot around. Or have people alredy made every other robot conceivable.
This is ridiculous...they've gone too far this time. We, as the open source community, must demand our dancing robots be "free as in beer," and not susceptible to the whims of our vile corporate masters. Heck, it should be the other way around...the robot should only dance to Ogg Vorbis encoded music, downloaded from FreeNet. Information wants to be free...don't our dancing robots want to be free, too?
Consensual sex is boring.
"Warning: it takes a while for loading."
:P
:)
What? Did I accidentally go to Srashdot instead?
(Sorry, couldn't resist!
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
what with showing the exact same picture in the link and all! Thanks Ananova! Perhaps your investors are still reeling from the Max Headroom collapse? Oh internet bubble where are you now, eh?
Slow loading site? A good slashdotting will solve that problem.
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;
Learn something useful like How to write faster managed code
I think their design is firmly in the Uncanny Valley (article on said valley if you don't know what I'm talking about, http://www.arclight.net/~pdb/glimpses/valley.html) . If this thing moves realisticly, I think the mannequin head and torso would be a bit disturbing to dance with. (And I think the guy in the picture agrees, based on his facial expression!)
From what was once an inarticulate mass of lifeless tissues, may I now present a cultured, sophisticated, man about town.
Most of the mods don't know what "women" are.
...that the Japanese would take a shot at a developing a tentacled rapist robot before a dancing one.
Color me surprised. Or is that relieved?
I have to assume that upon the robot's first request to learn how to dance, they taught it to tap dance, and then realised that what it was really looking for was a dance that was appropriate for a wedding.
I hear the waltz is a much more complex dance for a robot to learn than tap dancing because it has to look at your eyes, not your feet.
and give those diodes a rub.
does it run Linux?
I know this is off topic and all, but damn, the pathetic part is all they had to fucking do is release the source code. That's all they had to do!
Rosie Palm and her Five Sisters, anyone? O_o
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
These dancers will take over the world
I will tell ya!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
I find it more effective to skip the middle-man, or middle-bot in this case, and plug the electricity directly into the human. The dance is then much more interesting.
Table-ized A.I.
I, for one, welcome our new dancing robot overlords!
eleven plus two / twelve plus one
Yeah, but the problem is -- as I understand it -- that this work was commisioned by a group that probably expected to get a "closed" source program for their money. However, it's hard to know how innocent they really are in this. Maybe the knew about this but expected to get away with it, though I don't see how anyone would assume that seeing how fscking obvious this violation is.
Smart? I would rather dance with a dumb robot. It makes me look better in comparison.
Table-ized A.I.
You thought the giant robots were bad already? Just watch how much of Tokyo they destroy by dancing through it.
I Can't wait.
Come on MS when are you going to do it? :)
See it for yourself:
Here or Here too
Although now that I think about it...
I don't think they will ever make a robot that can can do what Steve Ballmer can do!
Developers, Developers, Developers - Music Video (Quick Time Video)
I live near Tohoku Dai, and this robot is the closest most of the male students are ever going to get to holding a woman.
This has already been done in the 80s...
Remember the robot girl Vickie of Small Wonder?
See [here]
Heh, hook up the DanceR with Honda's ASIMO humanoid robot and we'll have the world's first robotic couple!
if they programmed this robot to do the robot.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Seriously, I don't know why this doesn't come up more often in communities interested in robotics. If I were doing anything with robotics, I would make every fucking robot I made be able to do the robot, not to mention kick out the jams by itself when no naturally occuring jams are available.
Maybe I'm just more of a visionary than most people though...
These things (fembots) can give a blow job then I'll be interested...
Dancing? I can make my dog dance
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
Personally, I'd rather dance with Tamiyo Kusakari.
Hurry and see the original before J-Lo and Gere wreck the concept.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
OK,
Now that's just about the most disturbing thing I have every seen in my entire time browsing.I mean that scrawny geek is hugging up to a manakin on wheels.
This reminds me of my time as a researcher at the local University.
Those research lab boys need to get out more often (and their professors).
I showed it to a friend of mine who works in the arts and she said (and I quote) "yuccckkkky!"
xxx
MP
Uuhm, I don't think she's Salsa material.
Methinks they took the "grandma in wheelchair" model and tried to sell it of as a dancing robot.
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
They could get a robot that can play DDR.
No relation with Microsoft. Move on, nothin to see here.
Actually, in shakespearian times, "nothing" is a euphimism for the female's reproductive organ. Armed with this knowledge, the play "Much Ado about Nothing" makes a LOT more sense, or at least, a lot more than you have thought possible.
The irony of your phrase, "the dancer getting 'nothing,'" need no explanation I suppose
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I'd ask one of our Japanese readers to either confirm or deny my understanding that this robot is being used to perform lap dances on very willing clientele.
does it allso come in an inflatable portable model?
As opposed to what, a dumb robot?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
if they were inflatable this would solve the problem.just let out all the hot air.lol
They don't get much better. A couple hundred years from now, we'll still be teaching robots how to dance.
Star Trek: The Next Generation is proof!
Make Crapade. i can think of a few iraa people to give Crapade too!
If it can do the waltz with any degree of precision, it's gotten to a stage that I have never been able to reach. And yes, I have been (forced into) training.
Black holes are where God divided by zero
"You don't want to take over the universe do you? You wouldn't know what to do with it. Except shout at it."
- Dr. Who.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
You prefer married hands? :-)
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
TRANSLATION:
This sidebar [MY BLOG] is completely irrelevant and redundant, but I'm including it anyway so I can mislead you to believe it is a sidebar to the original article and you will click on the link and drive up my traffic. It contains a photograph [BY ASSOCIATED PRESS] -- which I took without authorization [OK, I STOLE IT] -- of a student waltzing with the robot, MS DanceR (Mobile Smart Dance Robot), coming from another short story carried by Ananova. [THAT'S WHERE I STOLE THE AP PHOTO FROM]
Tune in next time to see if I ever plainly say that the mysterious blog I keep linking in my posts is mine! I bet I won't! :)
No body temperature? Requires high levels of maintenance? Knows only 5 steps? Crap! These guy's just created my wife!
A beowulf cluster of these robots eh!! sorry, that was bad...really bad..
Sure, me & the robot have a couple of dances, then she talks me into ordering her a bunch of expensive drinks that turn out to be just watered-down 20-weight machine oil. I hate when that happens. "oooh, just a couple of more drinks and I'll let you use the DeWalt cordless on me..."
--If 50,000 people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
The MSDanceR?
If this thing has the same security problems as that other MS, just think, it could be open to viruses. What happens when a dancebot gets a virus and starts malfunctioning?
All of a sudden, your dance date hits the drink table, starts pouring booze down her robot-throat and signing "girls just wanna have fun" at the top of her lungs... er, speaker.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
oh crap it's dance dance revolution 2k3!You probably get points off for stomping on her toes or using her arms to do trick jumps
Or not at all!
Typical of the Japanese to build a subservient female robot that follows the male partner's lead. I, on the other hand, am looking forward to a dancing robot that's fisty and not affraid to take the initiative.
The power of Christ compiles you!
"Dances with Robots"
Lt. John Dunbar, exiled to a remote space outpost, befriends aliens and robots, making him an intolerable aberration in the military.
Length: 4 hr, 58 min.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
Blue screen baby, robot lady,
Apache server for the band
Camera eyes, painted smile,
You were built by geeky men
Hard drive grinder, you might just find her,
dancing on silicon
Now she's got me, she don't dance sloppy,
MS DanceR, you're the one...
Hold me closer, MS DanceR.
Count your megabytes of memory.
Tokyo loves robot women.
Don't you drain your battery...
Linux freaks, out on the street,
Handing tickets out dissing Bill
Turning back, she just laughs,
Windows XP is not that bad...
Visit me on the web at Permanent4.com.
First off, it's not a sidebar to either of the articles linked. It's a link to Roland's weblog.
Roland: Don't be a weblog spammer -- that's what it is you're doing -- by telling us the link is one thing (a sidebar to an article) when it's actually another (your weblog).
Copyright infringement like what Roland did by stealing this photo for his blog is a big reason why we're seeing much more aggressive actions by copyright holders. Couldnt he just have linked to the Ananova story and told us there is a picture there? Or if he was really desperate to get traffic to his weblog (although I'm not sure why -- Blogdex / Daypop / Google rankings? A paid gig like Salman Pax?) he could have easily linked to the image at Ananova or any other site thats carrying the AP photo.
Since Roland is from France, a country with a long history of respecting artistic works (even quasi-artistic commercial ones like the AP photo), I would have expected that he would have the decency not to rip the photo off. I'm sure the photographer would appreciate getting credited with his own work.
A completely separate piece of advice: the best way to get people to read your weblog is to add something of value such as insightful commentary - I don't see any of that on your weblog.
Stealing someone else's content and tricking the Slashdot crowd into clicking on the link is a great way to get a bad reputation as someone who is sleazy and manipulative.
Is that a hydrospanner in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
give 'em a break yo. how many slashdot nerds actually have been to the prom?!?
that the mere hint of a pleasure robot gets modded up.
only 100% offtopic? mods must be slpping lol.
Dance Parter Robot