Sony Claims First Running Humanoid Robot

News for nerds writes "Sony Corporation announced the new development of Sony's humanoid robot, enabling integrated motion control for walking, jumping and running on feet. By applying this technology Sony has created the world's first running humanoid robot 'QRIO'. Japanese PC watch has an article with pictures and movies of QRIO running at 14 meters per minute, sometimes with both feet leaving the floor (= running)."

Comments

boring...

[Anonymous Coward]

wake me up when they create a robot that can breakdance! now that would be cool...

Get with the times, Sony

[.c]

Wake me up when their humanoid robot looks like a little blond boy. I mean, who'd adopt a white boxy monster named QRIO (Queerio?)

Let's just hope

[CompWerks]

It doesn't run for Governor of Kalifornia!

Babelfish translation..

[rale, the]

here
- rale

It RUNS but

[Guiri]

does it run Linux?

Re:Calling Bill Joy

[Clinoti]

Lets not go overboard here, women in some countries still do not have the right to vote or have basic human rights.

The uproar from giving those same rights to animate/inanimate objects before humans opens the door to so many arguments it's not even funny.

Of course the preceeding statement is contradicted by the fact that seemingly every conglomerate seems to have rights....

Prosthetics for amputees

[AndrewCox]

I was just watching some news program (60 Minutes, 20/20 or the like) about recent Iraqi war veterans that have lost limbs in combat. Since their medical expenses are covered by the government, they were being fitted with the best prosthetics available (containing micro-processors that make adjustments based on the user's movements).

What surprised me was that although the legs did seem to work fairly well for walking, there's still a lot of room for improvement (climbing stairs was very difficult and running was out of the question). Advancements in robotics like this could be a great step forward for prosthetic limbs.

How soon before robotic limbs become so efficient that people are voluntarily amputating their legs for the better robotic counterparts?

Re:Not Bill Joy...

[CommandNotFound]

...I think you mean Call Isaac Asimov, who wrote _The Bicentennial Man_ upon which that movie was based. Asimov probably inspired a lot of roboticists and tackled a lot of these human/robot ethical delimas in his fiction, including the controversial Three Laws of Robotics, which I'll repeat here for completeness (if you don't know these, you should go to the library and read some Asimov. _I, Robot_, is a good start; it's a collection of his short stories about robots.

Three Laws of Robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

old news

[savuporo]

Check out http://plyojump.com and its accompanying blog for very good summaries on Japanese humanoid robot developments. ( the site seems to be down at the moment, but google cache helps )
QRIO was presented already back in august, at Robodex2003. QRIO is a direct followup, "production release" for previous development codenamed SDR-4XII.

There were other bots presented at Robodex, that were able to perform jumps and even somersaults.

The most interesting two IMO, are not megacorps entertainment bots ASIMO, AIBO etc, but humanoids that are of practical use or very low-budget, like HRP-II that is able to drive a backhoe, remotely assisted

And other one, SILF developed by a single person ( student ? ) on obviosly quite a low budget. Still, the bot is able to perform jumps.

Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With!

[cuiousyellow]

But does it have real People Personality?

If so it will give weight to my theory that Sony consists of a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Re:Distance

[cyberlync]

This robot is also about a foot tall. If we scale the robot up it would be something like 84 meters per minute. Of course, thats assuming scaling works and it can be scaled. Also I havn't taken into account any other factors. Someone who actually knows about bio(robo?)mechanics may actually want to chime in here.

This is really a great breakthrough!

[Gethsemane]

My masters thesis is in robotics and most individuals do not comprehend how hard it is to make a bi-pedal robot walk unsupported. When you examine the biomechanics of a simple taks of walking, you quickly realize just how impressive of a feat it really is! (You parents out there know what I am talking about.) Baiscally to walk you have to fall forward and catch yourself with a leg that swings infront of you. Essentially you are in an equilibrium of falling forward and balancing yourself with your feet. Of course this is an over simplified approach and doesn't consider how your toes or balls of your foot assist. Bravo to Sony! And hopefully Honda and Sony get into a race and do some real development with each of their respective robots.

Fuel Cells

[G4from128k]

This is where fuel cells will really come in handy. All jokes aside, a robot that can down a jug of methanol (and dump its waste water) and be refuelled in 30 seconds would be vastly superior to a robot that must be tethered for an hour or more to recharge its batteries. The superior energy density and speed of "recharging" make fuel cells the way to go.

Because legs are all terrain

[XNuke]

Try getting a wheeled vehicle to go everyplace you can go. Upstairs, climb a ladder, move in any direction from a dead stop. Wheel are great if you want to go fast, but legs are better if you want moderate speed and maneuverability.

Ask someone in a wheel chair what they think of wheels instead of legs.

Re:Admit defeat

[AKnightCowboy]

why can't you just do the nice thing and say "Good Job guys keep it up!" instead of "crap we better get our arses in gear before the japs send their robots to control us"

Because humans are all about competition. Don't even pretend that's not the truth. Everywhere from schools to offices to sports to global politics... everyone competes with everyone else. It's human nature.

Re:Admit defeat

[musikit]

Wrong, humans are about survival.

correct we must survive the onslaught of japanese robots attacking the US.

can't we just invade them saying these robots are WMD? (danger will robinson sarcasm detected)

Re:Run Forrest!

[kermit6306]

"When QRIO determines that its actions will not prevent a fall, it instinctively sticks out its arms, swivels its hips, and assumes an impact position. At the same time, the control system instantaneously commands the servos in the joint actuators to relax slightly. In this way it lessens the shock of the fall, enabling it to survive unscathed. QRIO is also programmed to check its position after a fall, turn itself face up, and recover from a variety of prone positions."

I found that on Sony's website.