Robosapien: Latest Toy Robot From Mark Tilden

Onnimikki writes "Mark Tilden has been building really cool BEAM robots for a long time. Now, he's come up with RoboSapien, a toy that no self-respecting geek can go without. Videos of the RoboSapien at the 2004 New York City Toy Fair have been made available by Solarbotics. Mark offers some really good explanations about what makes them work."

Comments

Imagine if he spent $200!

[erick99]

Watch the demo video, the first one on the video page. The technology behind this robot is amazing! Each movement of the robot, for example, returns 50% of the energy used back to the batteries. This means the robot can run it's seven motors for 20 hours. While the robot itself is pretty wild - it can do some pretty wild things and not fall over - the real benefit, I think, is in how these innovations can be translated into more serious robotic applications. If he can do all of this with two chips and 12K of assembler code, imagine the possibilities for something that might cost a bit more than this robot's $99.

Happy Trails!

Erick

Re:Imagine if he spent $200!

[l810c]

It's been a few years since I was really interested in things like this. But this thing is just light years ahead of anything I'm aware of.

This looks like something that's released in Japan 3 years before it ever(if ever) makes it to rest of the world.

I'm reminded by those multi-million dollar Japanese robots(Doesn't Honda and someone else make one?). They have huge research labs, this guy has literally evolved his robots from bugs to sapiens. The next generations should be amazing.

Oh yea, and my son will be getting one of these for his 1st birthday in a couple of months. Here, play with the box.

you can preorder this today

[way2trivial]

at best buy, 100$ pricetag

Re:you can preorder this today

[r_glen]

Online, too

Re:you can preorder this today

[Attaturk]

I for one welcome our new robosapien overlords.

World domination robot

[Anonymous Coward]

"A full function fast moving robot minion suitable for all your world domination needs."

And for only $99? Wow, we should've invested in these in Iraq.

Re:World domination robot

[iminplaya]

Wow, we should've invested in these in Iraq.

We would of, if Halliburton made 'em.

Re:World domination robot

[domsol]

[I]We would of, if Halliburton made 'em.[/I]

But then they wouldn't have cost only $99 apiece...

Bless You, Child

[illuminata]

Well, I have to give this guy credit, for when he was playing God he didn't choose to create RoboSapien in his own image.

I mean, shit, a big robotic dude with mean chops would freak me out.

Don't tell Arnold

[victor_the_cleaner]

Blatantly policital:

Good thing he didn't name it HomoSapien, or the Terminator/Gov. of California (difficult to tell which part is more of a stretch) would say:

What a Homo Robot? That is illegal!

Re:Don't tell Arnold

[ctrl-alt-elite]

"I dont want anyone to think were robosexual, so if anyone askes, your my debugger."
-Bender

Popular science quote

[t0qer]

At the bottom of the page they had 4 links, the one to popular science had this to say.

the 14-inch-tall RoboSapien, which will retail for about $80 when it hits stores later this year, uses analog transistors to react to signals from the world around it.

How is this different from the aibo?

Re:Popular science quote

[kertong]

it isn't $600. :)

Re:Popular science quote

[Anonymous Coward]

The philosophy of BEAM robotics

Re:Popular science quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the robots he builds aren't build using fast microcontrollers and heuristics to get things to move. They're designed using analog techniques (i.e. discrete amplifiers, capacitors, and resistors instead of a custom ASIC - similar to the way people designed things like TVs 30yrs ago with only a couple dozen transistors versus the millions of logic gates in modern TVs). So instead of using a digital timer on a chip you could use a charging capacitor. Well designed analog systems can be much better than digital solutions.

The main reason people don't do things in analog more often is that its hard to design and its typically even harder to design something that can be mass produced (due to tolerances/ manufacturing variations). A popular control systems design book has a photo of his UniBug on the cover because it's such a neat applications of controls theory. The bug can walk without needing any long fine tuning to get parameters to just the right value.

Of course analog design suffers from a whole host of problems that the digital world is relatively immune to. For example, noise in an analog system is a huge killer whereas noise in a digital system isn't so bad untill you start working at >100MHz. For example, 1-2mv (that's 10^-3) of noise in your analog system can be deadly if you're amplifying that signal by 100x-1000x whereas 1-2mv of noise in a digital part isn't such a big problem.

At last

[CrystalCut]

A small, somewhat cute robot that wouldn't freak you at at 4 AM if you bumped into it.

Actually, I found this pretty cool. Amazing these little guys have such ablities consdering the technology.

After seeing countless videos of many different robots, this is on the only one I could see putting on my desk. Don't know how the ghosts who haunt my abode are going to feel about it though.

I, for one, welcome...

[Anonymous Coward]

...our tiny, little overlords.

language skills

[victor_the_cleaner]

from the WooWee web site:

- Speaks fluent international "caveman".

It's nice to see more interest in 'caveman', unlike dying languages such as Latin or 'Furby'.

Although 'caveman' is not a selection at Babel Fish yet.

dammit!

[kertong]

"- 67 pre-programmed functions including pick-up, throw, kick, sweep,dance, fart, beltch, rap, and half-a-dozen different kung-fu moves.
- Speaks fluent international "caveman".
- Three demonstration modes: Disco dance, Rude behavior, and Kung Fu kata.


Well, looks like I'm going to lose my job to a $100 robot.

Re:dammit!

[fnord123]

My girlfriend already told me to start packing my things :(

Would these things interact with each other?

[Simon Carr]

If not, that should be stage two. Why buy one $99 minion to bully your colleagues with, when you can buy two that will work as a team (heh). And of course, who could resist the sick pleasure of making them fight each other for batteries.

RoboSapien media

[dnixon112]

Bigger picture:
http://www.androidworld.com/www_toy.jpg

Video:
http://www.iirobotics.com/downloads/robozip.zip

Come to daddy

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Farts, belches, who needs bio-brats when you can have one of these for $99 and less than 9 months waiting time.

Re:Come to daddy

[orkysoft]

Bite my shiny analog ass! ;-)

This is not especially interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Pray tell, why is this an especially interesting development? This toy is basically a remote-controlled device. Far from a "robot", like AIBO or QRIO which actually have autonomous capabilities and can decide to do things on their own.

I move to strike the word "robot" from any device that is not autonomous in some fashion... :)

Re:This is not especially interesting

[EtherealSys]

In my opinion, this is an exciting article, not because of the robot's capabilities, but because of its price tag. This is bringing some pretty sophisticated robotics to a completely different market than the AIBO or QRIO. If these motor skills can really be done at such a price, there's no reason why we shouldnt see pretty dramatic drops in the prices of the more expensive tech toys.

Re:This is not especially interesting

[kfg]

Is a programable industrial robot a robot?

KFG

Re:This is not especially interesting

[randyest]

If these motor skills can really be done at such a price, there's no reason why we shouldnt see pretty dramatic drops in the prices of the more expensive tech toys.

Don't be so sure. These are analog control circuits, not digital logic. So there' s no CPU or microcontroller to program with autonomous-ish behavior. And theres not an easy (or cheap) way to control the analog circuits even with add-on digital controller of some sort or add new response behavior based on new sensor inputs -- the discrete component operating ranges are to small to produce the wide variety of behavior you can do with digital logic.

So, if you want this toy to do something new, you can't just tweak some assembly code, or vary the pulse-code modulation signal to a servo, you have to design a new control circuit. There's the rub.

Still kinda cool to watch an $80 robot do a little jig with decent dexterity. It's a great achievement in low-cost analog feedback control systems. If we just knew how to make cheap resistors and capacitors with wide ranges of easily-controllable parameters, we'd be seeing some major advancements spawning from this.. .

Re:This is not especially interesting

[SWTP_OS9]

Actualy human are basicaly an analog unit. Good concept of using analog which in motor control works better than trying to do it digitaly.

If this thing runs! Then pitty the poor cat population! { Evil laughter goes here! }

Re:This is not especially interesting

[elmegil]

It does sound automomously programmable, just not completely behavioral like Aibo. Of course it's not $1500 either. Also there's this bit from the All Nerd Review article:

What Tilden emphasized with the RoboSimian, was the customization possibilities involved. Are you listening, action figure customizing freaks? Now you can dress up and paint your very own robot. He also said that because of its affordability, techno-geeks (I'm looking at you, Dave) can open this sucker up and play around with his insides, looking to see not only how he works, but what can be done to him. Wise move.

If Mark Tilden says he made it so you could play with the guts, I think I'm gonna want to play with the guts.

Re:This is not especially interesting

[randyest]

Well, strictly speaking everything in the real world is analog, of course. But, in the way we're using the terms here, analog means made from discrete analog components and feedback circuits with fixed values, which are distinctly unlike the human's (and other animals') unique ability to vary the analog operations in such widely varying and relatively precise ways.

Digital, as relevant here (like an Aibo), means able to be approximated by binary values and transformed by logical operations using digital circuits that drive digital-analog converters such as servos and motors with "digital" imputs and controls. This sort of thing lends itself very easily to programming that can be changed and modified easily, sensors added to the system with little impact or re-design needed, etc.

My point was that analog discrete devices, like the ones used in this toy, tend to be only cheap enough to warrant a system price of $80 when they are the plain old-fashioned fixed values, which means the circuit made of these that controls the behavior is not variable (its behavior depends on these fixed values). It does one thing, and has a few circuits that it can shunt in an out to do several canned things. But making it do a new thing, even a slight variation is hard and expensive, and adding a new input from a new sensor, something trivial in most digital control systems (like an Aibo), is nigh impossible.

So, again, the only way this sort of analog-circuit control system robot toy will help bring down the cost of other, digital processor-based robots, is if we find a way to make cheap discrete components with variable parameter values controllable by digital logic, and even then the savings would be pretty small. You still need the ASIC with the microcontroller in it. Maybe your servos and motors could be a bit cheaper -- maybe.

Re:This is not especially interesting

[randyest]

Let me hold your hand as we stroll through it together, then:

This is not a robot (in the opinion of the original poster and me) because it is neither autonomous nor does it have the capacity to be made autonomous-ish by adding sensors and a brain (microcontroller). It can only perform canned macro-functions and sequences of these canned macro-functions. Micro-scale control of its functions is not available.

A programmable assembly-line robot is, however, a robot not because it's autonomous in itself (assuming you're talking about the arm / mechanical part), but because it could be autonomous if you grouped it with it's controller, which is a reasonable thing to do despite the fact that they tend to be seperated by some distance in practice, they key is they need not be. In most assembly lines, the robots are programmed to do repetitive tasks with minimal or no variation of behavior based on sensor inputs. But they could easily -- you just have to re-program the microcontroller (brain) and add sensors. So they are indeed robots -- micro-scale control of their behavior is available, and with inputs, a microcontroller, and some clever code, you can make an autonomous robot.

Re:This is not especially interesting

[kfg]

Well, it's an interesting opinion, although it differs from the dictionary definition. Nor am I entirely certain your conclusions about the toy robot are true. I don't see why adding sensors and a microcontroller to a fully functional mechanical man wouldn't create an autonomous mechanical man, or the difference between this mechanical man's controller being remote from himself and the industrial robot's controller being remote from itself.

I could add such sensors and microcontrolers to my R/C car easily enough and your definition seems to rely on being able to add things to a machine to make it a robot.

You'll also have to hold my hand through the micro scale control of movements issue. I'm at a loss as the to relevance of that.

I would hold that my analog thermostat, which has a sensor and reacts autonomously to enviromental factors to perform a useful mechcanical funtion is a robot, although lacking a microcontoller, or any electronic way of modifying its behaviour.

I take it you would disagree with me, and also hold that BEAM robots are not robots if they lack a microcontroler?

KFG

Re:This is not especially interesting

[zozzles]

To all who think this is a particularly "analog" device, I'd like to point out that in the "intro" video clip, the ending words are:

So, that's pretty cool for a hundred buck robot with no gyroscope, the brain of a calculator and two chips inside, one, the Hitachi motor driver based upon nervous network control technology, and two, a dedicated sound processor based on a 4-depth stack modified PIC20 and 12K of assembler code.

(see also http://groups.yahoo.com/group/beam/message/41592 )

This is a radio controlled toy that is run by a microcontroller (the PIC20) using 12Kb of programming. Yep, good old software, the bane of the BEAMworld.

The motor driver chip no doubt is a variation on Tilden's "adaptive h-bridge design", but that is about all of the "nervous net technology" that is being used - heck, the motors in all the other "robots" are analog but no one goes around claiming how they are so special...

I am going to buy one simply because it is a lot of "stuff" for relatively little money. However, having been the BEAM Heretic for 7 years now, I take all the the exaggerated claims with the same tablespoon of salt I usually do.

Old quote: Digital is just really fast analog.

Zoz
hogfather@no spam earthlink.net

Re:This is not especially interesting

[randyest]

An analog motor controller is usually a closed-loop feedback control system consisting or resistors, capacitors, inductors, and amplifying transistors. Which is not really the forte of ASICs. I'm not sure why you're under the impression there's an ASIC in the Robosapien -- I didn't see that anywhere, and I read every link I could find. I guess there could be, but that'd be overkill -- a simple PIC running a very simple state machine could handle this:

Using the ergonomic remote control, you can command Robosapien(TM) to perform up to 67 pre-programmed functions including pick-up, throw, high-five, whistle, dance and three different karate moves.

Robosapien(TM) is fully programmable. He can perform a programmed chain of commands in any combination of moves that you select. For example, you can create your own dance sequence or program him to walk straight, turn left and give your buddy a high five.

The cool thing about this isn't the complexity of the system, or it's ability to be as autonomous as even a Roomba, rather its lifelike motion accomplished by very fast, very cheap (but not at all flexible or extensible) analog closed-feedback loop control circuits.

Analog circuits, BTW, are much harder and more expensive to design than digital logic. Most cheap PICs and simple controllers include no such analog circuits (just A/D and/or D/A if you spend a bit more). Certainly not the highly custom and tuned ones needed here. ASICs also cost more for custom analog cores. Your ASIC vendor may give you a stock, commonly-used analog core for free (PLL, DLL, D/A, A/D, etc.) but you'll pay for custom layout, at least one test chip, and lots more per part to design your own RLC/amplfier circuit into an ASIC than just using the stock cellbase or gatearray digital logic.

And, without being even more expensive, the 1% accuracy you quote for passive component variations on cmos (the cheap) process is way low. More like 10-500%, especially for the relatively large (~kOhm, mH, and mF) R, L, and C values needed for control systems. It's easier to make really small R, L, and C's on cmos, but the accuracy is poor unless you pay a lot more than $80. Moreover, the amplifiers you need are too strong for cheap cmos processors -- why buy enough die for tens of thousands of tiny weak transisors optimized for on/off operation (which is the smallest feasible die to make these days) when you only need a few strong ones configured to amplify? Discrete would be cheaper and more precise/tunable in this case.

World domination, eh?

[Faust7]

A full function fast moving robot minion suitable for all your world domination needs.

*looks at robot*

Well, sure, if you plan to dominate the portion of the world that's smaller than 14 inches.

I guess that could work. I mean, if you control the floors and electrical outlets, you pretty much control everything.

Re:World domination, eh?

[katre]

I guess that could work. I mean, if you control the floors and electrical outlets, you pretty much control everything.

My cat has two rules:

• Anything on the floor is his.
• Anything on anything that is his, is his.

Since rule 2 is applied recursively, he can easily rule the entire apartment, despite being less than 14 inches tall!.

More Videos

[smr2x]

Hate to do this to this poor server.. But there's a zip file with two videos here:

http://www.iirobotics.com/webpages/hotstuff.php

Have fun!

Reminds me of...

[Beolach]

The trailer/advertisement for the I, Robot movie being made right now. Looks more like an ad for an actual robot, rather than a movie.

pre-orders at BestBuy and ToysrUs/Amazon

[Anonymous Coward]

BestBuy is taking preorders for RoboSapien at $99.99 shipped free.

Toysrus.com has it for $89.99 but no free shipping.

no computer required! :(

[Roman_(ajvvs)]

that's a shame.. I hope that they made it optional at least! I want to make my robosapiens scare the crap out of my housemate when he gets home! :)

My favorite Mark Tilden story

[Anonymous Coward]

I got this at least second hand so if somebody has a more accurate version I would be interested to hear it.

Mark was giving a presentation at a conference. He was showing off one of his small insect robots. He then (to the audience's horror) crumpled it up like a wad of paper and put it down on top of the overhead projector. The audience was then able to see it unfold itself and walk away.

Unfortunately, the story has a larger context which explains how it comes to be that Mark is down in the States rather than still here in Canada. Again, I would be interested in hearing an accurate version of the story.

Re:My favorite Mark Tilden story

[mkucic]

This is true! Mark Tilden visits the Telluride workshop each year. This is gathering of Neuromorphics junkie, I being one of them attended one year. He builds robots using a very simple basic building block. Each building block being able to run on its own. The building blocks connect together to form a larger system. He can literally damage the system and it will continue to operate. Each block adapting to the lack of input from its neighboring block. Kinda weird to watch someone rips wires out of the gut of a system and then see the thing adapt to the loss and still move along.

Re:My favorite Mark Tilden story

[Tekmage]

One of the core ideas he's getting across when he does that (or at least at the time when I saw him talk back in '92 or '93) is that analog is a lot more robust when it comes to failure modes and design considerations. If you have a more robust platform to start building upon, you can do more with less.

He's a fascinating guy to meet in person. You have to have your wits about you and be hard-core techie to track his conversations though. :-)

When everyone else was focused on computationally intensive approaches to trying to make things walk, he was doing it with a handful of transistors. And as you pointed out, he's not up here in Canada any more...

Since I can't even preorder a Robosapien to ship to a Canadian address, I'll be picking up a couple when they come out on my next State-side trip!

Re:My favorite Mark Tilden story

[c]

Mark was giving a presentation at a conference. He was showing off one of his small insect robots. He then (to the audience's horror) crumpled it up like a wad of paper and put it down on top of the overhead projector

Sounds like Mark. When he was a lab tech at University of Waterloo, I got to see him do similar things on many occasions, although maybe not as extreme. Then again, his budget was whatever he could scrounge at surplus electronics stores. He'd bend and twist the wire legs of robots, flip them on their backs, swap around resistors to change the style of walk of the robot, and generally introduce randomness into their environment.

He also had the most kick-ass water gun ever, which he appears to have turned into a marketable product. Although it looks like he dropped the flash bulb. Pity.

c.

Re:My favorite Mark Tilden story

[Anonymous Coward]

Very interesting...

Of course they had to send him away a few weeks to buy him a PHD somewhere as he doesn't have a legitimate one, a requirement for that level of pay at LANL.

I was told by an insider that personnel had his education rating "officially" limited to being a bachelor's degree.

last I heard he's doing a quarter mil a year from LANL

He left LANL somewhat before September of 2001. I believe I've heard that there is a book that is required to be in the Los Alamos County Library that lists all of the employees and their salaries, but that might have been "once upon a time".

He is however a super nice guy, very enthusiastic

All absolutely true. Also extremely generous.

-- Let's see... who am I today?

BitTorrent for video files

[Dr. Ion]

The Solarbotics server is under a bit of stress, so here's a torrent for all four video files, 42.7MB total.

It can fart?

[NanoGator]

Does that make it an android?

THUD! CRASH!

[SWTP_OS9]

Well need to wire the jaw back in place this is outstanding. Now tie it into a computer as a hire leval brain and wow!

That made the Sony one look like 2 year old mush!

Are they sure it will go for 99 dollars! WOW!

I've got to say...

[smr2x]

This is one of the only robots I'd buy. Looks fun and entertaining, but the real clincher for me is the price.

A robot has always been a geek toy I've wanted, and this one will definitely fit my price range.

If anyone else has simliar, relatively low-priced robots, fill me in?

Thanks.

C&D on the "would OF" business!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good, strong joke - but c'mon man, you're making my eyes bleed over here.

People, it's would have. As in "We would've done it that way, had we known better. We would have written it like so, but we insisted on doing it incorrectly - for some incomprehensible reason." /Grammar-nazi-within-me out.

Robosexual

[giminy]

Now, he's come up with RoboSapien, a toy that no self-respecting geek can go without.

At first glance, I thought this said "can go out with."

"Rude Behavior"?

[Penguinshit]

Finally I'll have someone to blame my flatulence on besides the dog and my wife (neither of whom are amused).

Grand & Tilden

[Usquebaugh]

I'm sort of an amateur AI/AL person, unlike the MIT clowns I admit to it :-)

There is a great deal in common between this and the game/work of Steve Grand. Steve has started to work with robotics and I think this a mistake. He could have taken his software to the next level.

Both Grand and Tilden feel that you can create life with very simple processes. You do not need to spell about how something is to behave but what something is. This is a fundamental change from the traditional AI/AL approach.

The exciting thing is that the approach of using simple processes is paying dividends. Where Grand might explain conciousness, Tilden can explain physiology.

Where is computing going in the future, take a look at the work of these two gentlemen and see for your self.

Annoying camera angle

[ILL Clinton]

Love the robot, hate the cameraman!

Was it really necessary to keep Mark Tilden in the shot at ALL times? Could we have gotten ONE close-up of the robot? A medium shot even?

Open source sig, feel free to modify it's source and distribute publicly.

already been done.

[rebelcool]

The player system.

If you have a robot which supports some form of connectivity (IR, wireless, tethered.. protocol isn't all that important), you can make player connect to your robot. Player is a TCP server which then allows you to write your robotics code in whatever language you see fit, provided it has the ability to connect via TCP. It abstracts away hardware in much the way a driver does, and provides a uniform way to access sensors and effectors.

It's a nice system.

The Honda Robot

[Mick Ohrberg]

Doesn't Honda [...] make one?

Yes, Honda has ASIMO, or Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility. I remember first seeing ASIMO walk around, looking a little creepy, since it walked with a relatively "human" style. It also "...turns sideways, climbs up and down stairs, and turns corners." And it's starting to look more and more human with each new prototype.

This is _VERY_ interesting....

[Usquebaugh]

The real world can be analog and digital at the same time. It's red not blue. it's a sort of pinkish red. Is time discreet or continuos? What do you mean you do not know!

Fixed, what is fixed? There are a lot of fixed values in the human body. In fact most of the body is based on very fixed processes. Feed back, is a very fixed response. The complexity comes with the sheer number of feedback systems working in parrallel. We cannot model this complexity with a pre-programmed system, but it may be possible to simulate the feedback and then set those loose to model the system.

Have you _EVER_ worked with a digital robot, adding a new senosr is not easy? Adding a new response is not easy. In fact this is one of the main stumbling blocks of digital robots. Everytime you add a new sensor you have to explicity program for it. That means the robot is limited by the imagination/time of the designer.

In response to your last paragraph, take a look at beam robots. See how they can do tasks with a few components that complex digital robots cannot. See how they deal with component failures. Think about how this ties back to nature. See that tieing into a feedback circuit is easy, but ultimately unpredictable.

This whole area is opening up after 50+ years of going in the wrong direction and achieving only predictable systems. AI/AL is embracing simple systems that combine automatically to implement complexity.

Read Stephen Wolfram, Steve Grand and Mark Tilden. All three are showing that unpredictable complexity can be modeled by designing simple feedback systems and then letting them interfere with each other. Chaos theory is the underlying mathamatics.

To cast aside this arena as just a cheap toy is to be blind to the sheer scope of the undertaking.

Orville, Wilbour put down that paper plane it's just a toy.

Re:This is _VERY_ interesting....

[randyest]

I didn't say it wasn't interesting. One the contrary, it is an amazing control system, to repeat myself.

The real world can be analog and digital at the same time. It's red not blue. it's a sort of pinkish red. Is time discreet or continuos? What do you mean you do not know!

Time is continuous on the scale of interest to robotics -- human scale. No question.

Fixed, what is fixed? There are a lot of fixed values in the human body. In fact most of the body is based on very fixed processes. Feed back, is a very fixed response. The complexity comes with the sheer number of feedback systems working in parrallel. We cannot model this complexity with a pre-programmed system, but it may be possible to simulate the feedback and then set those loose to model the system.

Sure, if you're implementing the very-hard-to stabilize multiple simultaneous parallel interacting feedback loops. But that's not what this is. This thing does multiple sequential control systems. It's an important distinction theoretically and practically.

Have you _EVER_ worked with a digital robot, adding a new senosr is not easy? Adding a new response is not easy. In fact this is one of the main stumbling blocks of digital robots. Everytime you add a new sensor you have to explicity program for it. That means the robot is limited by the imagination/time of the designer.

Yes, I made a few based on 68HC11 microcontrollers in my EE undergrad work. It's technically challenging to add a new sensor and program/debug code to make it work in a digital system like that, especially if you don't know what you're doing. But it's infinitely easier to master than making a closed feedback loop control system be able to accept a new input and still be stable, much less actually do it.

In response to your last paragraph, take a look at beam robots. See how they can do tasks with a few components that complex digital robots cannot. See how they deal with component failures. Think about how this ties back to nature. See that tieing into a feedback circuit is easy, but ultimately unpredictable.

They each do pre-set things. Maybe several different ones, selectable in sequence, but the systems themselves are designed to be stable around a known point -- that's why they work -- there will never be any emergent behavior, or even cleverly-programmed unexpected behavior. It will always do what it does, however cool that may look.

Read Stephen Wolfram, Steve Grand and Mark Tilden. All three are showing that unpredictable complexity can be modeled by designing simple feedback systems and then letting them interfere with each other. Chaos theory is the underlying mathamatics.

Right, I didn't say it's not an interestig field with lots of cool stuff to discover. Maybe you're confusing me with the originator of this thread.

To cast aside this arena as just a cheap toy is to be blind to the sheer scope of the undertaking.

It is cheap. It is a toy. But I'm not casting it aside. I'm apt to buy one, in fact. I only noted that this technology is unlikely to decrease the cost of digital microcontroller-based robots and Aibo-like toys, except possibly by sheer competition and market force (at first), because it's fundamentally different technology.

Orville, Wilbour put down that paper plane it's just a toy.

That's not nice.

Re:This is _VERY_ interesting....

[SnowZero]

In response to your last paragraph, take a look at beam robots. See how they can do tasks with a few components that complex digital robots cannot.

... and see all the things complex digital robots can do that beam robots cannot. I'll stop working on traditional robots when someone wins with a beam robot in RoboCup. I'm not holding my breath.

It's kind of like saying launching satellites is trivial because you can build cheap and simple model rockets. Or this: O(n^2) algoritms are usually a lot simpler conceptually than the O(n log n) ones, but the simple ones don't scale.

Re:Popular science quote (analog noise)

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the genius of Tilden's nevous network (different from neural network) technology is that it makes use of the analog noise. The back-EMF (noise) from the dc motors is used to directly inform the nervous neuron about physical interactions with the environment.
What are ordinarily considered problems to be engineered out of analog designs are considered as opportunities for exploitation by BEAM roboticists