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Build a Robot out of a Car?
SomeRobotGuy writes "A researcher in the U.K. is in the process of building an autonomous biped robot out of a Mini Cooper r50. Its functions are controlled by six computers running RTLinux and it's powered by an internal combustion engine. And the thing's not tiny, at over 10 feet tall! The site includes videos showing some impressive results."
Watch the "Battery Test" video, if that isn't CGI then I'm a monkey's uncle.
While this is some cool CG it really doesn't mean that his hoster needs a DDOS attack on port 80. I mean really.
Just take a look at the photos - clearly this is fake, done with CG. Look at the tires on the wheels - it's like they didn't even try.
Here's the image on the one page I could access. Below it was the text:
$ echo "ceci n'est pas une pipe" | sed -Ee 's/(eci n|pas )//g'
...it were real. This is basically a less cool version of the VW bug transformer video, which can be found here (sorry about the format). The creator of the video has an interview here, though the original site is down.
I'm surprised this slipped through, editors.
webpage
It seems that it is advertising.
A whois lookup on r50rd.co.uk returns the address:
6 darblay street
london
W1V 8DM
GB
A quick search for this address on Google reveals:
Martyn Gould Productions, 6 D'Arblay St, London, W1F 8DN, UK
On a page titled: "Film and Television - Post Production, Commercials"
I just came across a reply from the creator regarding its authenicty on Google Groups:
From: Chris S. (123@123.com)
Subject: Re: Robot built from a Mini Cooper?
View: Complete Thread (9 articles)
Original Format
Newsgroups: comp.robotics.misc
Date: 2004-03-11 13:08:35 PST
I'm not so sure. I really want to believe this thing's for real, but I
have some serious doubts. Here's the response I got from Colin Mayhew,
the robot's inventor:
Colin Mayhew wrote:
>I can assure you that the Cooper project is a real and
>very tangible one. Your suspicion is perhaps
>understandable because the leaps we've made are rather
>significant compared to the current state of
>commercial AI. As Mr. Clarke wrote in Technology and
>the Future, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is
>indistinguishable from magic." What's important to
>remember in this famous quotation is not that the
>technology becomes magic, but rather that technology
>seems magical only to those who don't understand the
>details or are not knowledgeable of the history of a
>technology's development. It's for that reason that
>I've placed notes online and have included videos from
>different stages of the project. Have you seen videos
>of people interacting with the Kismet robot? That
>robot uses a fairly simple emotional model, yet people
>bond to it and treat it as a 'living' creature! It has
>become something magical from bits of aluminum and
>electrons whizzing inside silicon. Your experiences in
>the research sector I'm sure have shown you how
>disconnected the public can be from the realities of
>technology. There are autonomous machines (be they in
>medicine or oil well drilling) so removed from our
>daily lives that when we finally learn of them, we are
>shocked and amazed---far more so than had we followed
>the gradual steps and wrong turns the engineers made
>developing and finessing the technology. This project
>is real, and it, and the systems I've developed for it
>are going to change the way we live our lives. The
>most recent software revision I've tested on the robot
>has some powerful reasoning capabilities, a large step
>more powerful and versatile than that employed on the
>robot when I recorded the videos you may have seen
>online. They are perhaps powerful enough to seem like
>magic, but both devil and the angel of creativity are
>in the details. Soon enough, these little creatures
>will be animating the robots all around us and making
>our lives safer and more fulfilling.
>
>Regards,
>Colin
>
>
> --- "Chris S." wrote: > Is your
>Mini Cooper powered robotic biped a real
>
>>project? Your site
>>seems detailed enough, but the videos look
>>suspiciously like computer
>>generations. Either way, it's an entertaining feat.
>>
>>Sincerely,
>>Chris S.
Take it for what you will. I just can't believe someone built something like that essentially alone in just a few years. It just does too much and it moves too fluidily. For instance watch the video where it stops a run-away Car.
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
Interestingly, r50rd.COM was also registered this time at NetSol in Jan. '04 by the same David Mayhew who registered the UK domain.
Just thought I'd share. I must say if it is a hoax... that's some pretty darn nice CG. If real, WOW... give me MY 10ft robot slave already!
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
Someone spent a decent amount of time on this if fake.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The last update of this site is in 1999 if that is to be believed. I suppose it's either the real last modified date along with a real Doc Mayhew or it is another part of the hoax. Thoughts?
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
Actually, the personal website of the author has a cleaned up, and significantly larger, version available here.
The ______ Agenda
managed to mirror it here.
Another poster has put up a mirror, though nobody seems to have noticed the original comment.
The mirror is available here.
The page doesn't load animations properly in Opera, and relies upon Quicktime to display the Mpegs. It might work in Mozilla, but it might not.
And again, adulations aplenty to xWh3lPx for the mirror.
The ______ Agenda
The Google cache itself could be considered illegal under certain sets of inter/national laws/treatys. Proxy servers are pretty decent caching mechanisms and are usually situated on the ISP pipe to the user, and seem to enjoy the same kind of "blind service provider" freedom from copyright infringement that ISPs themselves appear to have. None of the corps or ISPs I've personally worked for spent any time that I could see on figuring out how legal their proxy was, they only got attention when something technically went wrong.
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