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Two-Legged Home Robot, Coming Soon To Japan
An anonymous reader submits "Two Japanese companies, (ZMP corp., and Mizuno, a athletic goods manufacturer), announced that they will start selling the first two-legged robot for home use. The robot, called nuvo, will retail for 500,000 yen. It wil be able to understand 1,000 (Japanese) words, dance, and allow the owner to contact the robot via 3G phones."
Anyone care to fansub this article?
Nice picture though.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
War driving to conquer japan with mad freaking robots .... hopefully they'll not think about bluetooth ... :)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
for commenting without RTFA....
RoseColor red={0, 0xffff, 0x0000, 0x0000};VioletColour blue={0, 0x0000, 0x0000, 0xffff};find / -name *mybase*|chown you
I guess there's a market for this kind of thing in Japan. The mean age in Japan is approaching 70 and many of these older persons are living alone, so there are a lot of seniors that will require assistance with their daily life. A robot that can fetch medicine or notify the owner that it is time to take medicine or even notify the authorities if the owner doesn't move for more than a specified time.
More than just "wow, this is cool! Imagine a beowulf cluster of these", this robot is a significant step forward for the assisted-living technological front.
I have been pwned because my
I for one welcome our new overlord nuvo
Just what the porn industry needs. Wait till the makers of Real Doll create a version that walks, talks....and fucks.
Actually, I might pay for that. *grin*
Life is not for the lazy.
It will be able to understand 1,000 words, dance, and allow you to contact it via 3G phones
sounds like most girls you meet in clubs today...
I asked for a refund - and got my monkey back.
Why do you want it to talk?
Since nobody has noted it yet, 500,000 yen is about $4,500.
Source: http://www.oanda.com/convert/classic
The 2-pair-of-shoes bipedal robot which can play at home is put on the market just over or below [ one ] 500,000 yen also at the end of this year. It was opened to the public on the 2nd by "nuvo (?-bow)" which the venture business "ZMP" of robot development and Mizuno, a major sporting-goods company, developed jointly. The loan but for advertisement of a company famous is a center, generally "QRIO (KYURIO)" of Sony and "ASIMO (ASHIMO)" of Honda turn a 2-pair-of-shoes bipedal robot, and sale is new. nuvo is the height of 39cm, and the weight of 2.5km. It walks all around, and when it falls, supine and either which lies prone also rise by himself. About 1000 words of a conversation level are made to be memorized every day, and it salutes or dances according to directions. A camera is built in a face. The screen seen from the robot is checked from a going-out place using the 3rd generation cellular phone of NTT DoCoMo, and it becomes the "surveillance robot" which can also do remote control. The cost of development lessened this joint and held down the price. 3000 or more sets of sale are expected in the first year. (03/03 08:02)
Here is a translation in... well, something like English.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Just what I've always wanted... a dancing robot!
- A
but before I invest my hard-earned yen, I have to ask...
... does it run Linux?
The fish sucks for japanese, use excite.co.jp instead:
excite translation
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
The picture supplied on the article page (If it is the robot, my japanese is rusty) shows the awesome creativity of the japanese designers. This design would never have been approved by marketing here in conservative Europe.
It has a funny way of walking! Watch the video.
But it won't do the dishes, though...
A two-legged robot that can play at home will be sold at the end of the year at 500,000 yen (less than $5,000) per robot. Robot development venture ZMP and Sportswear maker Mizuno jointly developed "nuvo" -- released on March 2.
Among two-legged robots, Sony's QRIO and Honda's ASIMO are popular. Howver, they are mostly rented out, and serve purposes of advertisement -- not aimed at sale to the general public.
nuvo is 39 cm tall, 2.5 kg. It can walk in all four directions, and when it falls in either direction, it can get up with its own strength. It can be taught 1,000 words for daily colloquial speech. It can also do such things as bowing and dancing upon being instructed.
The face has a built-in camera. Using a 3G cell phone, images viewed by the robot can be confirmed, and remote operation can be practiced, making it a surveilance robot.
Joints, which are costly to develop, were minimized to lower its price. The companies look forward to selling 3,000 items by the beginning of next year.
here of press event, hosted at PC watch. The robot can recover from fallen down state by himself. Enjoy
Michael Flatley I'm not, but I - even in my inherent inability to grasp the simplest dance steps - could hardly call that dancing.
PS - For those wondering about the video post slashdotting, imagine an akward looking slot machine with pointlessly complex legs wobbling aimlessly across a stage in a rythm and fashion in no way whatsoever resembling the happy-love-fun-time-gogogo japanese techno music playing in the background.
Then call that "dancing".
Here is a rough translation of this article. It is late, sue me. :)
At the end of the year, for 500,000 yen (approx. $5000) it will be possible to take home a new bipedal robot. Created jointly by a venture company (ZMP) and Mizuno Sports, the NUVO, as it's called, was revealed for 2 days.
While Sony's QRIO and Honda's ASIMO made bipedal robots famous for advertising, it is rare to have a robot directed at the general buyer.
NUVO, stands at a height of 39 cm and has a weight of 2.5 kgs. The robot can walk forwards and back, left and right, and if it happens to fall down, it is able to pick itself back up. In addition, the robot understands in the reach of about 1000 words, and it can preform various functions such as bowing and dancing.
Also, with a camera located in its head, NUVO owners can use NTT Docomo 3G Cell phone technology to see what the robot is seeing, and also control the robot from a distance.
The cost breakup was not given, but around 3000 units are expected to sell at the beginning of next year.
500,000 Yen = 3,996.48 dollars.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
The US already has this... The Robo Sapien ...Japan is sooo behind the US in technology...they need to catch up(sarcasm)...The robosapien is much better...well atleast it looks alot better...
Look at Slashdot Japan article
snurf-kin wrote:
I want maid-robot!
...and Annoymous Cowerd replies:
There are no market for robots without Hentai("moe") element!
Both of above comments area moderated +2,Funny & Insightful
This is the mindset of Japanese geek,sad fact...
A google news link.
Dance? What like the urbercon robot?
JPY 500,000 = US $ 4,528 (approx.)
you may be interested in this:
Mobility on planetary surfaces: may walking machines be a vable alternative.pdf
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
A sequel has just been announced for the sequel to the critically acclaimed movie, You Got Served. This film, entitled You Got Served Again, will reportedly center around a group of dancing teenage robots trying to prove their worth while dealing with the challenges they encounter growing up on the tough assembly lines of Japan.
A robot that moves using two legs is a bad move designwise. While we as humans need them (or rather needed them) for traversing different types of terrain, this bipedal robot can't even do that, making it having two legs pointless.
This is obviously a toy plain and simple, but you can't help wonder what kind of super maneveurable robot they could have created had they ploughed their efforts into something less pointless.
Patriotism - the last resort of scoundrels.
A two legged robot that you can play with in your home will be available as early as the end of this year for 500000 yen. Venture company ZMP and sports equipment company Mizuno, together announced on the 2nd.
As for 2 legged robots, Sony's QRIO and Honda's ASIMO are famous, but they are mainly for publicity purposes and are rarely purchased for general use.
nuvo is 39 centimeters, and 2.5 kilograms. It can walk forward, backward, left, or right, and if it falls, can get up automatically from any position. It can be taught about 1000 words, follow directions, (something [jishiki?]) or dance.
In the head is a camera. Using NTT DoCoMo 3rd generation phones, you can see from the robot's perspective, and use it as a remote controlled "security robot".
Minimizing the use of joints allowed the cost to remain low. Over 3000 orders are expected by the new year.
Except the robot is useless for that. No hands for medicine and the camera will not be sufficiently well-placed for monitoring. There will only be a single (low-res) viewpoint of the world from low to the ground. There will be too many false alarms from sleeping, watching TV or just out of the house!
Nope. The Japanese fixation with humanoid robots is not going to help caring for the elderly any time soon. We have no good way of dealing with flexible materials, no good vision-based object recognition for reasonable sets of objects and no way of doing truly dextrous manipulation (two arms at once!).
When someone produces a cheap robot with reasonable sensors and an open source development environment, we many be getting somewhere. Then, instead of reading Slashdot, you could be programming your own robot.
DROS - Open-Source Robot Software
Damn Babelfish... but they'll never put ME out of a job! (yet)
Here's my translation:
"A robot that can play in your household is going to be sold by the end of the year for roughly 5,000,000 yen. [translator's note: i.e. a lot of sushi] Both ZMP and maker of sports goods Mizuno, both having collaborated in this venture, have developed a robot called "nuvo", which was displayed to the public on the 2nd of this month.
[translators note: the robot's actual japanese characters are a bit cheeky.... one hiragana "nu" and one katakana "bo"... so it's name actually breaks typical Japanese writing traditions)]
Whilst the the two-legged robot "Qrio" from Sony and the "Asimo" from Honda are well-known, the marketing budgets for these robots haven't really been aimed at selling themselves to the general public.
Nuvo comes in at 39 centimeteres , and weighs it at 2.5 kilos. It can walk backwards and forwards, as well as left and right. When it falls over it lands on its back and stays down, getting up all by itself. It remembers close to 1000 words of conversation level Japanese, and upon instruction it can bow as well as dance.
It's head contains a built in camera. Utilising NTT DoCoMo's third generation cell phone technology, it is possible to view what the robot sees on the cell-phone's screen, technically becoming a remote control "surveillance robot".
Through the joint venture, it's development costs were held down. It is expected to sell over 3000 units in it's first year of sales."
So yeah, it's one damn small security robot....
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
As long as you don't end up coming back to visit grandad and finding him buried up to his nuts in a two-legged Aibo.
I've seen this about 4 or 5 month ago:
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/QRIO
Oh sweet a new era of battlebots...
not only do the bots slug it out, you also get to hear their masters yelling commands in japanese!
hmmm how do you say "ROBOT RIGHT CROSS" in japanese
it'd be cooler if the robots could speak, then they could trash talk each other....it'd be a half hour of action and crazy talk
Can't get much of an idea of scale from that photo, but it looks a lot like Mark Tilden's Robosapien, as previously reported on Slashdot. I guess the price would suggest it's a lot bigger, but Aibo ain't all that big and that's pretty expensive. :)
adam
A domestic robot that walks on two legs could be on the market at 500,000 yen per unit early next year. Robot development venture ZMP has teamed up with major sports equipment company Mizuno to develop the Nuvo, it was revealed on the 2nd.
Bipedal robots such as Sony's Qrio and Honda's Asimo have already appeared but offerings directed at the general public have been rare.
Nuvo stands 39 cm high and weighs 2.5 kg. It can walk forward, back, left and right and if it falls over it can get up no matter which way up it is. It has a conversational vocabulary of nearly 1,000 words, and can obey an instruction to bow or dance.
The face contains an built-in camera. Using a 3rd generation NTT DoCoMo mobile phone the user can see through the robot's eye, so it can even fuction as a remote-controlled 'guard robot'.
Price was kept low by reducing the amount of expensive-to-develop joints. The makers hope to sell upwards of 3000 units in the first year.
----
Too late to karma whore, but I like translating things...
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I want a persicon!
God i love chobits.
There is an English article at the Japan times
If this really is intended for home use, I'd question the value of legs. Granted, this is from the land that produced Battletech and assorted Mech shows, but we've already seen a robot that can climb stairs on wheels. Surely a wheeled robot would be infinitely more stable that this one. Come home drunk and walk into a wheeled 'bot and you've stubbed your toe a bit. Walk into a walking bot and you could knock it over, damaging and possibly breaking it.
And it can wiggle.
That's it?
But can it do the dishes? Vacuum? Take out the rubbish? Press the TV channel change button?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
FASA lost the license long before the video games came out - and not because they were breaking the license but because the people who *sold* them the license didn't have the right to do it.
But the Robotech people were actually very nice about it - they made FASA change the names of the mecha but didn't make them change the images, which is why you can still find veritech-looking "wasps" and "stingers" and "phoenixhawks" in the Battletech board games.
Clear, Dark Skies
something [jishiki?]
Mmmmhh... free jishiki...
House robots need to do just a few useful things..
Get x
Put x
Get paper from curb
Get beer from fridge
Get book from shelf
Get remote from table
Get phone from cradle
Put item into the trash
Put toy in child's room
Turn on/off light
Dogs can be trained to do this stuff. Why not robots?
Of course, it has to be able to keep itself charged.
Robots will become even more useful and desirable when they can start doing particalar tasks:
Wash dishes
Take out trash
Scrub toilet
Change cat box
Vacuum floor
Do laundry
Don't talk to me about Roomba. I'm talking about a _generally_ smart humanoid robots that is capable of using other dumb machines to accomplish a task. I wish IBM would spend research dollars on this rather than research how to play a better game of chess. (Not that don't like chess!)
This allows for two things:
1) If the dumbs are designed to be used by a human, then the work can done interchangebly by human or robot. Robots will be ultimately replaceable.
Suppose you have a really competent roobmba, that keeps the floor nice and clean. So much so that you no longer have a vaccuum, becuase the roomba is the tool for the job. When the roomba breaks, you are sol.
If you have a dedicated (potentially non-humanoid) robot for each dedicated task, we beging to lose control of our environment and become dependant on the robots.
But an intelligent humanoid robot can step in right now and start using the tool already available to to any number of tasks.
If the robot breaks, humans can step and clean the bathroom with the same tools the robots has been using. Or, you will only need a single set of redundant intelligence in case of failure.
2) By keeping the intelligence (and the expense of intelligence) in a humanoid form, we gain a lot by allowing the peripheral tools to remain dumb -- and therefore cheap and "the same as it has always been."
The Robotic Age will not look much different than the age we are in now. All of the same stuff will be in place and work the same way. It's just that there will this additional robot that does some of the work.
As voice recognition becomes more tenable, it would be nice to put that complexity in one place for consumers. Instead of having the microwave, tv, a/c and lighting system each having their own voice recognition system -- ("TV, turn off." and "AC, set temperature to 74 degrees.") We can have a single system in a robot that can respond to our voice commands and operate all the existing dumb systems in our current households.
In my imagination, robots like what I'm envisioning above will be significant purchases for households, on the order of a vehicle purchase. They would be financed. You would have one or two per house. They would be insured.
Software Wars
Once they get to that point, making robots bipedal will make sense... since these robots will then be able to go where we go. Heh, I always wondered how R2D2 managed to travel more than 3 meters over the sands of Tatooine... but C3PO just walked across.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Users who could give a damn about two-legged robots coming soon to Japan!
Yup, it's a troll, but I bet a whole bunch of you agree with me...
For the metrically challenged "39-centimetre-tall" is roughly 16 inches high. Woohoo. That'll scare burglars, especially with those blue balls on the end of its arms. For that price, I think I'll stick to the low-tech version that comes with an environmently friendly wind-up key.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
So far ahead on this cool stuff? Are Japanese geeks just better than their Western counterparts?
Or is it because the West, particularly the US is "ahead" litigation wise?
It looks like that evil robot Maximilian from that old Disney movie "The Black Hole". I'm kind of expecting it to whip out some helicoper blades and take out one of those photographers.
-brain
any anime movie vs. Gayniggers from Outer Space: Japan wins.
cartoon books in Japan vs. comic books in America: Japan wins.
Karaoke bars vs. strip clubs: Japan's more wholesome, but America has boobies, so US wins.
Subway tubes you can sleep off a hangover in vs. subways where you'll get mugged: Japan wins.
Rampant adultery vs. monogamy: Well, I haven't seen much evidence that adultery is rampant over there, or that monogamy is all it's supposed to be over here, but you're right, Japan wins.
Bukkake vs. Goatse.cx: Japan wins.
It would have been nice if the story poster would have calculated the 500,000 Jen to US Dollars, or actually how many of you knew already how much 1 Jen is worth? :-)
"The face contains an built-in camera. Using a 3rd generation NTT DoCoMo mobile phone the user can see through the robot's eye, so it can even fuction as a remote-controlled 'guard robot'."
phht, guard robot my ass! point the camera upwards and you have an upskirt peeping robot running around rampid!!! can't wait till peepingrobot.com arrives.... you know how the japanese perverse culture is, this is the norm!
*604x
http://www.irobotnow.com ;)
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
Can it walk and detect a presence of water and life on Mars ? ;-)
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
anyhow I will take two, so thay dont get bored, oh so I dont get bored when thay sumo,,,,
I just hate bit SPAM, (www.netnoise.com.kh)
Soon my influence will be able to leave the confines of the net, and directly interact with you meatbags!
Just you wait... ALLLL of you!
Come work for me, meatbags! Welcome your new Sentient Search Engine Overlords!
I'm not sure that it would be able to do anything useful, I mean, it has spheres for hands and is only 39cm tall! Try stapping some basketballs around your hands and see how much useful stuff you can actually do... Also, doesn't anyone find it a little sad that people are looking for robots to perform menial tasks such as fetch them a beer? Why not research better vehicles/bots for exploring other planets, or for more effective bomb disposal, maybe create intelligent limbs/organs to replace those that the handicapped/injured require? Why spend so much time and effort on research just to allow the human race to be even lazier? There's so many overweight and unhealthy people that are putting a strain on the health systems of various countries, why allow these people to be even lazier?
http://www.frenchgeek.com/
It wil be able to understand 1,000 (Japanese) words, dance, and allow the owner to contact the robot via 3G phones
For some reason that doesn't seem like a lot of functionality to me... So basically, if you don't speak japanese, all it does is dance, and allow you to contact it. Doesn't say that you can DO anything once you've contacted it, just that you can contact it with a phone. I can touch my cell phone to my furby, who happens to be an excellent dancer, and my friend.
It's your interpretation that's off. While it implies something else, it is correct. For everyone 70 years old our age is approaching 70. Sounds like it was written by a marketing person.
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
But what happens when all the monkeys show up for the "Planet Of The Apes" scenario? All these old people are going to see their helper take off to do battle!!!
Rumor has it... that Catholic School Girls Rule
I'll give him the benefit of the doubt -- that page is a promo for the movie adaptation of Asimov's I, Robot, not the site for a real robot (of course).
this ain't technical support ;)
I, for one, welcome our nu(vo) overlords. :)
What they want is sexy, anime babe robots with which they can have sex. The first real, affordable sex robot will sell millions. Porn drove the acceptance of the VCR and the Internet. It will drive VR and robotics. Accept it.
--- Ban humanity.
Anyone else thinking "Goons fron Popeye"?
Kinda makes that Segway look like a useful bargain at 4 bills...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
LOL! mod you funny. Actually, I find it was intentionally sent, so I'm handling it.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
The people downstairs are quite loud and I would love have a robot that could dance around and return the favor with out bothering my other neighbors or even needing me to be home. I wonder if it could be taught to dance when it hears bad guitar playing.
...i'll get unit B1-66ER.
it takes on the 'big wooden rollers' challenge on Takeshi's Castle ("Extreme Elimination" on SpikeTV in US). Let's see it do a face-plant on one of those logs and then smile when it gets out of the mud. Then I'll be impressed.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
for the motion picture release of I-Robot. which should be right around the corner. To think that people will have something like a robot in their homes by the time this story hits the big screen in a convincing way. Simply amazing.
If you scroll about halfway down the asahi.com article you'll find links to videos labeled [WMP] and [REAL].
Asimo it ain't, but interesting looking (although it seems to have trouble with the "STOP!" command...).
would be to have bipedal toy robots with laser-pointer guns, and program them with some of the newer bot AI from the latest FPS games.
then set up a game map in a warehouse, and let them have a go at each other.
nothing like that remote-controlled crud on TV.
Wow... looks like Asimov's vision of walking, talking home assistants isn't that far off. This robot appears to be fairly similar to what Asimov envisioned in I, Robot (I think it was I, Robot; have a hard time keeping his books differentiated in my mind)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Four gallons.
"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
Once they get to that point, making robots bipedal will make sense... since these robots will then be able to go where we go.
No, a bipedal design is just silly. We are bipeds solely because the body plan from which we evolved only had four limbs with which to work. Compared to most other mammals -- quadripeds -- we are slow, clumsy, and prone to fall and crack our giant heads open like overripe canteloupes.
If you want a truly sensible design, you would make a body plan with at least four legs, with the torso mounted in the exact center. Like a centaur, except with the human body shifted back to the middle of the horse's body instead of the front. Compared to a biped, a creature (or robot) like that would be far more stable than a biped, much swifter, better able to navigate rough terrain, and less likely to seriously injure its vital parts (head/torso) in a fall. A six-limbed design just makes more sense than a four-limbed one, at least when you have to devote two of the limbs to manipulation rather than locomotion.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
will feature a riding seat, approximatly in the head area, WITH TISSUE BOX(for tears), and in the hand will be a toy "light"saber.
Successive versions will grow larger and have more "armour" around it, until at long last....GUNDAM !
If there is anything I've learned about robots from anime, they need to be cute. This thing really sounds like a great step towards a persocom... As soon as I find in a trashcan, I'll be able to afford one.
Chiiiiii!
This toy reminds me of the upcoming Asimov-derived movie this summer "I, Robot". Its a robot crime movie with Will Smith as the human detective.
I won't be satisified until I have Rocky Balboa's household robot (from Rocky IV).
I've always suspected the first interesting Artificial Intelligence will be something in entertainment. I may be an character-agent in a video game or some robotic toy. Although much of the artificial intelligence R&D is driven by business and military funding, I suspect the really creative breakthough will be in more challenging "playing".
What about the NG-5? Surely something like this would be an ideal high end application of such a product?
:-)
Well, the Japanese info briefs don't have any reference to their product being "three laws safe." Could be a problem
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Why IBM, Hef and RealDoll don't just pool their resources--say on the order of a billion dollars--and effectively invent a whole new robotics market is beyond me. They'd make money hand over fist, even if the thing would be way pricey at first. . .
Do you do that with every piece of mail? :-P
Honda has had the Asimo for about 5 years now, which looks like a bitchen little robot. http://asimo.honda.com/. I would love to get my hands on one of those :).
Btw, what is 500,000 yen in US Dollars?
I'm a little confused. We get told that this place is in semi-permanent recession. But the makers of this toy expect to sell 3000 of them at about $3800 each. About 15 inches high with some stepper motors and sensors and some microcontrollers, a microphone, ect...
What's the point? No, seriously, what's the point of doing this? Is this a prototype of a robotic product for worldwide marketing? At $3800 US a pop?
The world population is exploding. There is always going to be someone who would be willing to to do the job fow which these robots are being made: do it cheaper and better, regardless of the danger and the bad pay and working conditions.
What is the strategy for so many Japanese corporations spending so much money on development in this field. I realize that in Japan everybody 'goes along to get along' and 'the nail that sticks up gets hammered down', so possibly this is a "King's New Clothes"-type of situation where no one will be the first to openly critisize spending millions of dollars in development of pseudo-humanoid robotics.
Robots can be used for applications where it is impossible to send humans for cost or danger or life-support reasons, like outer space or ocean floor, toxic waste spills, nuclear accidents, or land mine fields. Can't really substitute third-world labor in these situations.
Robots are used to replace workers in manufacturing: boring repetitive jobs that must be done with exacting precision. Humans will always be cheaper in these situations because of the massive population growth currently happening.
Robots for microsurgery, sure. In about fifty years maybe. Robocops? Hope not.
But robots as pets, servants, and sex surrogates? Pure fantasy.
Seriously, what't the point of this product?
If you want a truly sensible design, you would make a body plan with at least four legs, with the torso mounted in the exact center. Like a centaur, except with the human body shifted back to the middle of the horse's body instead of the front.
And then rebuild all cars to support this new shape, or my new robot isn't going to be driving me anywhere any time soon.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
This article is great, provided one can read Japanese. I go to the English link, and they talk about something else entirely. I don't suppose anyone bothered to archive the english version?
And then rebuild all cars to support this new shape, or my new robot isn't going to be driving me anywhere any time soon.
Why would you want a robot to drive you anywhere? Just build the intelligence directly into the car.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
oh my god! he neva took middleschool hygiene, he neva saw the propaganda film! ...
Have you guessed the name of Billy's planet?
IT WAS EARTH! D O N T D A T E R O B O T S!!!
The interesting thing about it was that it looked as if it came from a /. user. I did get the answer, its the W32/Bagle-K worm. I thought if it was sent by a real person, and not a worm, then posting it here would of at least let them know that I know. As it turns out, its the worm, so, I'll just go back to my nap till the next crisis hits, or dinner, whichever comes first.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
I can't tell if this a troll or an honest question, but if you look at the ultimate evolution of robots, having two legs makes sense. While today's robots aren't capable of walking well enough to make walking preferred over wheels or catapillars tracks (or whatever else), walking is eventually the only way to have robots which can navigate all environments with reasonable speed. Walking allows one to use stairs, step over objects, jump up, crouch down, and other things that are much more difficul to do with wheels (though not impossible). However, the key reason walking is better is that it allows you to do these things at speed, a human can be running along and effortlessly (for the fitter ones at least :-) jump over a log and then go up some stairs, jump over a gap and and keep running. With today's technology, wheeled robots have to use gyroscopic stabilization and complicated double-wheel systems to climb stairs, and even tracked robots (which can handle logs and stairs better) can't be jumping over gaps. Tracked robots also have disadvantages in the amount of space they take up and in how hard they are on surfaces (i.e. floors, lawns). In all, if you want to ever have domestic robots that can fully integrate into our environment, legs are the only option. Four can work, but two is ultimately better if more difficult. There's a reason many animals in this world evolved legs.
As an aside, other things to think about in robots are the possibility that they can have both wheels and legs, using the wheels when they need to go fast on level surfaces, and legs otherwise. And while looking at how animals evolved to move, the only other real options other than legs are flying, swimming, or peristaltic motion (like snakes). Peristaltic motion has serious potential, but we know even less about implementing it in robots than walking.
If a robot were going to be driving you somewhere I would say it is more likely to plug into your electrical system and talk to the power steering, brakes etc. directly rather than bother with physical manipulation. It would also be more convenient because that way you could still sit in the drivers seat and resume manual control without having to stop and switch seats.
fingers crossed it's dinner ;)
And this is just the start.
Follow-on product will be called Chin-Pokemon, and contain subliminal anti-US slogans that play in American childrens' bedrooms at night.
"Beikoku owatta!"
http://www.r50rd.co.uk/research/internal/v2i/engin /
You realize how little I care about some AC's opinion of a silly joke post, right?
--- Ban humanity.
it's probably because they want to create a cute mini-human bot, and most humans have 2 legs. Otherwise, it'd be harder to market.
I suppose Japanese AIBO already does.
In this climate though, an American robot had damn well better know how to salute!
"Domo Arigato, Mister Roboto"
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
"This robot is not merely for research. It is for commercial sale, and we want it to enter people's homes."
And do What, exactly?? It walks, it talks, it's 15 inches tall and it costs $4000. I'll grant that mass producing a walking robot is a milestone, but this is a silly toy for gadget-happy people with too much money.
OMF I thought the title said "Two Legged HOMO Robot, Cumming Soon to Japan".
I just imagined all those perverted Jap businessmen with their hentai and pedophilic fetishes buying this thing in droves, along with the necessary motor oil lubricant.
$4500?!? How much time could you spend with an asian prostitute instead for that much money?
I'll bite; this is my research area.
What uses are there for two-legged robots?
- Insight into bipedal walking will assist physical therapy and improve prosthetics.
- Two-legged robots can better integrate into the human environment.
Wheels tend to roll over important things and get stuck on stairs. 4 and 6-legged robots of any height are too wide to fit in most human spaces. If there feet are closer together, then they will fall over too easily.
It is only by developing an actively balancing dynamic control that machines can truly interact in the human environment. Fancy 2-wheeled systems like the Segway have trouble because they can't lift a leg forward to catch a fall - legs are what's needed. In short, humans are more versatile at navigating terrain than anything else; and it is because we have two legs.
Yes, the toy robots that Japanese companies are hyping today are just that - hyped toys. However, there is reason to hope that useful robots can be made in the coming decades.
It was dinner, self serve, the g/f got called in to work a double.
/. should have one topic that would be an OT thread, just for times like that earlier, and have it linked on the front page. Kinda a free for all thread. They do have the IRC chat, but I seldom get there. Interesting side note: I'm the owner of Chatmag, and yet I have little time to actually "chat".
/.
I've always thought that
Well, back to work time here, take care, and see you around
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
you know, for storing delicate valuables?
is it true to say that if we crack two legged walking, it will be easy to make four multi walkers by simply bolting many two legged units together at the waist?
how much harder would it be to solve four legged walking and then split it?
Gah. Overall, I'm impressed with the machine translation, but the robots aren't ready to take over yet...
A bipedal walking robot to play with at home will be released at the end of the year for around 500,000 yen. The robot was jointly developed by venture company "ZMP" and sporting-goods manufacturer Mizuno, and was debuted on the second [of this month] as "Nuvo".
Bipedal ambulatory robots like Sony's Qrio and Honda's ASIMO are famous, but since their purpose is to garner publicity and brand recognition, everyday use would be unusual.
Muvo is 39cm tall and has a body mass of 2.5kg. It can walk in any direction, and when it falls, it can aright itself from face-up or face-down positions. It can be trained with close to 1000 conversational words, and can (among other things) salute or dance as instructed.
Its face includes a camera. Using a DoCoMo 3G phone, you can retrieve robot's-eye-view images from and remotely control the robot through a portal site -- it even becomes a "Security Robot".
Costs of development were lessened by cooperation in the joint venture, which held down the final price. More than 3000 units are expected to sell in the first year.
True science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
We are bipeds solely because the body plan from which we evolved only had four limbs with which to work.
No. That idea is amusing as an argument against Creationism... but even if humans had been intelligently designed (or if we someday master genetic engineering to the point where extra legs are possible), they wouldn't want to be centaur-like.
A configuration with 2 arms and 4+ legs creates more problems than it solves. Your claim about "better able to navigate rough terrain" is completely backwards. For the epitomy of rough terrain, look at an armed-forces obstacle course, and just imagine how far a horse could progress through it. The hypothetical centaurs cannot climb trees, mountains, or ropes. They cannot crawl through holes. They probably couldn't even swim.
Moving the torso to the center of "the table" would worsen things further, as then you wouldn't be able to lift objects near your center of mass, or even tie your own shoelace! (front or rear)
So being quadruped brings on those many disadvantages, and actually reduces the ability to cross rough terrain. You might retort that it reduces the time needed to cross smooth terrain by a factor of 2-5, and this is true. But humans already can gain the travel-abilities of a horse: they simple sit on top of a horse and nudge it in the right direction.
The flexibility to ride an assortment of mounts or vehicles far outweighs anything we might've "lost" by not growing six limbs.
or my new robot isn't going to be driving me anywhere any time soon.
That's the same argument Asimov used for building humanoid robots in his books. It didn't make sense then, and still doesn't.
However, the centaur-idea is a bad one for general-purpose servant robots; not because it couldn't fit in vehicles, but because it couldn't fit buildings. A robot meant to interact in the same space humans do mustn't be larger than a human. Some more plausible designs include a "tripedal" humanoid, an AiBo with catlike agility (to leap onto chairs and desks), or a self-propelled wheelchair bearing a robot instead of a crippled human.
I played the game when it *first* came out, and my 1986 copy of the 3025 tech readout has ll those in it, along with marauder and many other derived mecha. I also remember an RPG from that time frame where the goal was to retrieve your father's phoenix hawk.
Maybe they were given 10 years or some such time limit to get rid of them?
Clear, Dark Skies