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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?
The price is about $18,000, but you can choose between five colors.
Oh, 5 colors! That explains it.
Buckethead
"This is scary"
I don't know about you but the price scared me plenty.
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?
and it needs a flamethrower.
sure, i could see that being scary. if it had built in blow torches...and were 9 feet tall.
Hey, it might be frightening if you were a little person.
:-P
Or a baby.
But I don't see the "dragon" resemblance...looks more to me like the robot from Lost in Space paired with 4 spider legs and a...well...I'll leave you to decide what the small, skinny, football shaped thing in the front is.
I guess it is supposed to be a head. Now, isn't that an interesting coincidence...
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.
Just imagine a beowulf cluster of these. Just like the DnD movie! *schivers* I can't believe I watched that horrible movie...
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
Buy a gun.
Just me, or do they kinda look like the tachikomas in Ghost in the shell.
Hmm.. at $18,000 I think any burglar who gets caught by the dragon will thank his lucky stars and steal it.
Choose between:
60, 90, and 120 hit points!
Your choice of virgin damsels!
Comes in varied alignments!
Speaks Common, Japanese, Digital, and Draconic!
All for a mere 18,000 Gold Pieces!
Eighteen grand for a humidifier with legs? I've seen scarier Legos.
It looks like a Guard Turtle to me. *shrug*
RaGe
We're all just noise on the wires..
This guy has the technology to make robots, and the most useful application he could think of was a "dragon" to guard your home? When are they going to come out with things we actually care about, like virtual sex androids? I think there would be a huge market for those babies.
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/
Considering that the word Dragon in Japan is Ryu, which is also used in reference to Dinosaurs. In Asia, the words for dinosaurs are also dragon. It makes much more sense that the ryu used in this case is referring the robot as a dinosaur, not a dragon.
Besides, it looks like a Stegosaurus to me.
"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.
Robots were cool. They were either really smart tins on wheels (R2D2) that shot a lightsaber your way in times of need, golden droids that looked like a person (C3P0) and could speak 3 billion dialects, or huge kick ass killing machines with gatling guns (ED209). In short, robots were cool and I wanted one.
However, this story has me convinced that all we're gonna end up with is fscking Muffet from Galactica... Thanks Far Eastern robot wizard dudes... Thanks very much!
Look at the flash slideshow and see for yourself...
clicky
Is this a case of engrish? Looking at some of the pictures in the flash animation, the text on the machine seems to be Banryu Neo Dinosaur. Or something very close to it.
Does everything include nothing?
OK, these people need lessons in designing killer robots. Three points:
1) Sharp jagged edges. This thing looks like it could safely be left with a kid.
2) Metal. Plastic is not useful for scaring people.
3) Red glowing parts. 'Nuff said.
Compare the cost for this with a series of security cameras, which have metal, sharp edges, and red glowing parts if you go with the right vendor.
telemarketer: Hi, I'm calling from ADC Home Security systems, how are you today, Mr. Hood?
me: Not to good.
telemarketer: Excellent, We are calling because we giving a way 20 free robotic house-gaurding dragons to people in your neighborhood and you have been selected to receive one. This dragon, an $18,000 value, will guard your home when your gone, perform CPR if you choke, or call the police if there's a fire. Plus, it comes in your choice of five colors. This is yours for free when you sign up for our $2995 a month service and monitoring plan for five years. That's less than a hundred dollars a day.
me: That's not free.
telemarketer: Yes, but surely you can't put a price on your family's safety.
me: I wouldn't have thought so either, but here we are.
telemarketer: But this robotic dragon is the greatest technological marvel since the beginning of time. It also can scorch intruders into charcoal and catch you if you fall down the stairs. Is there any reason you aren't interested?
me: I already have a security system, actually.
telemarketer: May I ask what brand?
me: It's a hedge maze in the front yard.
telemarketer: Really, does it work?
me: I haven't seen the mailman in a while, so I guess so.
telemarketer: Hmmm. *click*
Unknown host pong.
This is the same company that developed "Enryu" which was mentioned on /. a while back:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/11/141524 5&mode=thread
Thats got to be the worst dragon I have ever seen. and for 18k? I would hardly say that people don't know what a dragon 'looks' like. There are many pictures/representations of what people perceive dragons to look like, and I would hazard a guess that a class of 5year olds could come up with a more 'realistic' design. The Mark Tilden guy that had the $100 dollar robots, now they were good. and they could run and wouldnt fall over etc. Now get a few of them hooked up with sensors and you would have a decent house guard, and I bet it would come under $200
If at first you DON'T succeed, Skydiving is NOT for YOU!!
Ah to hell with the dogs, I want a Reason! :)
668.5
"The price is about $18,000, but you can choose between five colors."
This has to be the most absurd thing I've heard all year (yeah, all three months, ha ha). What possible connection does being expensive have to do with coming in five colors?
Honestly, it's on par with The Simpsons' "Beware! It carries a terrible curse! But it comes with a free frozen yogurt, which I call frogurt"
http://www.chmodoplusr.com/
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.
Honestly, what good is an expensive guard robot that just alerts you? If I spent tens of thousands on a robot to protect my house from intruders, I want it to be able to tear any woodbee burglars to shreds.
I mean, really. Someone breaks into your house and hears this:
....
"FREEZE INTRUDER! Do not move while this autonomous robotic guard unit apprehends you."
whirr... thunk. whirr... thunk. whirr... thunk.
"This guard unit has commanded you to FREEZE!"
whirr... thunk. whirr... thunk. whirr... thunk.
"Hey, damnit, stop, I'm trying to... who the fuck left this stick in the middle of the room?"
thunk. thunk. thunk. thunk. whirr... thunk. whirr... thunk.
"Wait! aww, c'mon... "
whirr... whirr...
"Shit."
---
Quite a long ways off from that bitchin' mecha-thing from Robocop, neh?
s'wut i sed.
Well, as you say really the thing only costs about $500 in parts. But part of what makes it scary, AND a dragon, is the fiery breath - after extensive research it was found that the most efficient fuel source for said breath is $100 bills. So it comes equipped with about $17.5k of ammo to use for fiery ruination for would-be interlopers.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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*!
K9 is *way* better. I mean, sure he can be knocked on his side more easily than this thing can, but at least he's got a decent lasergun in his nose.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
Why does this thing need to be a robot? In order to justify the price? Just put these same sensors around your home and be done with it. It's akin to putting wheels on a Mac and charging $15K more! silly...
So what's to keep me from pulling up in a pickup truck and stealing the guard dragon itself? I mean, I didn't see a big fricken laser mounted on its head or anything...