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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?
Just me, or do they kinda look like the tachikomas in Ghost in the shell.
"he was not able to use the familiar design of a dog. The idea was already taken by Sony, with its successful Aibo."
Does this mean that noone is ever going to be able to make a robot dog ever again (apart from with permission of and payment to Sony)??
Or was he just concerned that the public would see it as an aibo lookalike?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Look at the flash slideshow and see for yourself...
clicky