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Banryu, Robot Or Dragon?
Roland Piquepaille writes "When Yoichi Takamoto, president of the small Japanese company Tmsuk, decided to build a robotic guard for your house, he was not able to use the familiar design of a dog. The idea was already taken by Sony, with its successful Aibo. Instead, he decided to develop the Banryu (or "guard dragon") robots. After all, nobody has ever seen a real dragon. So he was free to design it as he wished. The result is a scary robot which is 90 centimeters tall, weighs 35 kilograms, has more than 50 built-in sensors and can transmit an alarm to its master's cell phone if someone tries to invade the house. It doesn't come cheap. The price is about $18,000, but you can choose between five colors. The Asahi Shimbun tells us the story, while this overview includes several pictures of the frightening dragon." This is scary?
I've said it before (just as recently as the Movieoke post a day or two ago, where it seems like we're a hairsbreadth from the 'ractives featured in The Diamond Age. This seems to be a hairsbreadth from Fido in Snow Crash. I think I will have to reread everything to see if I can't spot the next trend. The unfortunate thing is that he's been so prolific with ideas that it's like looking for a needle in a haystack!
dragon? Don't they mean cow? Seriously now, does this resemble a dragon more or a cow?
Even with 50 sensors and a system to read and process the data, how do they come up with $18,000? If it could walk up stairs, right itself, etc, I might understand, but it doesn't look that way. I can cobble together a PC, appropriate sensor receivers (BTW, what do they need 50 sensors for? Every joint?), and some software for a heck of a lot less than that. It wouldn't look as cool, but it would do the same thing.
Buy a gun.
Wow, that sure beats the heck out of a couple webcams and some sensons for Radio Shack.
Of wait, no it doesnt. It's just stupid looking, and you can SEE it, which kinda goes against the concept of hiding the security system...
Get a dog.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
For 18 grand, it *should* be made of platinum.
Look at me! I've made an original joke that hasn't been beaten into the ground like Rodney King! Bow down before my fresh and original humor!
To disarm it, just throw lots of water on it. "Bow Wow Bo....zzzzzzt!"
A more cost-effective solution would be to put video cameras all over your yard. An intrusion detector could set off your pager/phone and you could log in on the web at work to look around.
Table-ized A.I.
Where do they mount the blast cannon, in the hump? I bet the poison needle is the only reason they bothered giving it the head. Needs a Cylon roving lead display on the head, too. It also looks like the legs are too stubby to properly leap and grab people's face with the metal blades that you would just have to add to the leg units. And, somewhere or another, there should be at LEAST one taser. All in all, needs work, but sign me up once you add the accessory package. Although, if you add th lethal enhancements, please for the love of the gods don't let it be running a Microsoft OS.
I can think of better things to deter thieves than $18,000 portable objects. Unless they came equipped with weaponry. Then I could think of better things to make me feel safe in my home.
For great justice.
It seems to me most of the commenters so far posted seem to laugh at or are purplexed by this "house guard." What they seem to not understand is what all these robot technology is ultimately supposed to do: replace people in menial labor.
They are making small steps to make robots a practical consumer device--pets, house guards, robot vacuum cleaners, small child-like assistants for the elderly (Honda). Eventually they will do more, but the basic technology has to be perfected, and market developed.
Sure, the robots seem hopelessly useless now, but what they (the japanese) invision is a future where these things will be common place as the VCR. And *they* want to be the ones making and selling them.
Remember when automobiles were first being invented, most people that they could never replace the horse carriage.
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
Ex-con Home Security Guy: But surely you couldn't put a price on your family's lives.
Homer: I wouldn't have thought so either, but here we are.