Slashdot Mirror
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."
Now it just needs a loudspeaker and a recording of "BITE MY SHINY METAL ASS!"
They could have picked any transformer and they pick BUMBLEBEE?
They should use a red tractor trailer to build Optimus Prime.
The things you can do with photoshop...
Holy crap! It's a Motoslave!
RadicalBender.com
... and After Effects.
The site is well camouflaged to make it seem real. The CG work is well done. It wouldn't suprise me if this is a site created by MINI. They have a long history of non-traditional advertising. They have put a MINI in the stands at a Giants Baseball game. They put them into Malls on a platform with coin slots saying $16,995 in quaters for a ride.
There best known one was putting the MINI on the roof of a Chevy Suburban and driving it arround San Francisco.
It was also recently revealed that the Weekly World News article with BatBoy Stealing a MINI was a planted article by MINI USA.
Actually he's Bumblebee's British cousin, Nigel. (He visited Cybertron during the short-lived Transformers sitcom.)
Fifteen comments and the server appears to have bit the dust.
Slashdot should come up with some automatic link-cacheing system or something...
free speach
Did you mean: free speech
For something claiming to be "the fastest Web server ever". It certainly doesn't seem to be standing up to a slashdotting very well.
Seems like it's become a custom around here to destroy small hobbyist sites. *sigh*
From what I got to see of it, it is truly awesome! The amount of work this guy has put into this project is just amazing. Makes me realize even more how much I want to get into the field of robotics.
Now THAT is a toy!!
I'll take a dozen!
server on the cooper engine.
MORE HORSEPOWER!!
I would hate to be the other robot when this thing makes it to battle bots.
...er, I mean /.-ed...
Clearly, this is an unacceptable use of an automobile.
Laws are for people with no friends.
This thing looks like a cross between a Gundam and Robocop. I think that Jesse James should have built this on Monster Garage. OK. Now what does it REALLY do?
i wonder if it would qualify for the Darpa competition. I think it would be an interesting twist if it did.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
Watch the "Battery Test" video, if that isn't CGI then I'm a monkey's uncle.
The site is well camouflaged to make it seem real. The CG work is well done. It wouldn't suprise me if this is a site created by MINI. They have a long history of non-traditional advertising. They have put a MINI in the stands at a Giants Baseball game. They put them into Malls on a platform with coin slots saying $16,995 in quaters for a ride.
There best known one was putting the MINI on the roof of a Chevy Suburban and driving it arround San Francisco.
It was also recently revealed that the Weekly World News article with BatBoy Stealing a MINI was a planted article by MINI USA
Take an F-15 and turn it into Starscream.
Or, optionally, find a thirty-foot-long alien ray gun and turn it into Shockwave.
Don't forget Unicron!
The world can be wrong today for once.
There is nothing but fluff on that site. The "sketches" have the stink of marketing all over them. Now, whenever I see a Mini Cooper, I'll be reminded of their pathetic "me too" attempt to get some attention. At least Honda's Cog ad actually entailed some technological brilliance and real work to make happen. All this does is raise the question of where the line should be drawn when it comes to making false claims of research and development in order to get free advertising. Isn't that illegal? What's the difference between what Mini is doing and what we'd think of a drug company that fabricated a bunch of bogus "technology" to imply that it had a cure for cancer for the purpose of getting free advertising?
Yeah, I guess I don't like the feeling of being duped by a marketing department.
Note to self: If I ever make a web server, don't put advertisements for it on "Error 503: Server Broke" page.
Six computers in a Cooper Mini? Hell, they'd never fit. This must be fake.
Red Green already did this with a K-Car. And a few rolls of duct tape.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
when they called it KITT. All they need now is a couple of LEDs on the front of the car and William Daniels in the trunk.
The /. effect got to the page before I did... But I wonder if the robot looks something like this:
m pg
http://home.comcast.net/~themichaelsmith/VWHiRes.
Homme petit d'homme petit, s'attend, n'avale
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'
No way man! A BattleMech is way cooler than any fruity ass robot that transforms into a refridgerator. Put a .50 cal on it, some recoilless rockets, maybe a laser or two and send it out looking for Osama bin laden.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
...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
Of course I agree it's a problem, just giving my thoughts on the situation...
Jonah Hex
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
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
at least have the sense to attach it as a reply to a lame attempt at first post at the top.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Yup, this is advertising. Genius, but still just a Mini plug. Check the whois then google the parent company.
Kip Hawley is an idiot.
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
Free advertising here on Slashdot.
Cheers
VikingBrad
Actually, the personal website of the author has a cleaned up, and significantly larger, version available here.
The ______ Agenda
Gah, you gotta be kidding me. Back when I was playing MW2: Mercenaries, the most godlike mech I ever used was a DC Urbanmech named Lucifer. (yes, the beer-keg on legs)
It had maxed out jump-jets, twelve medium lasers, and maxed heat sinks. Its only other weapon was a machinegun in the head with one ton of ammo, for taking out Elementals and such.
All the lasers were in either the left or right torso, where those arms would shield all of the hits. All the beams would fire at the same time, and hit the same place.
There is nothing like oneshotting an Atlas. Period. Especially when you horizontal-jet in a la Gundam to do so with a glorified beam-saber.
And being in an UrbanMech, I was always ignored until big things started dying.
Don't tell me that it was cheap, I know it was.
(12*6=72 damage, way more than any PPC)
Think about this: It took Honda years, and millions of dollars to create the ASIMO robot, which does nothing compared to what this one did stopping the car, and unscrewing the bolt from the wheel (robot arm dexterity test). ASIMO was also created by a huge team of mechanics, scientists, and programmers. This guy actually wants us to believe that he 1. built the thing, 2. programmed all the fast, complex motions, and 3. built it out of a cooper? bullshit. I dont even think that with the weight of the car applied to the motors the thing was using, that they could have as much torque and speed as they did. This may have been more believable if he made a more official looking website, and faked some press activity. I mean if it were real, this would have been all over the news by now, doing demonstrations and everything.
managed to mirror it here.
Have you guys heard of "Stealth Marketing"? 60 Minutes covered it a few months back, but basically, imagine this scenario.
You're walking down times square, and a pretty couple with exotic accents, who look and act like tourists asks you to take their photo. They hand you their digital camera. You notice it's one you've never seen or heard of before, so you snap the photo, and then ask about it, and they proceed to tell you how cool this camera is.
You've just been 'Stealth Marketed' -- the tourists are fake, actors hired to stand in Times Square asking people to take their photo.
You're sitting in Starbucks and you see a guy playing a cool game on his laptop. Pretty soon, he's letting you try the game and you're hooked. Turns out he's also an actor hired to sit in the coffee shop and get people to try the game.
This looks to me like a Stealth Marketing campaign diliberately directed at the Slashdot crowd. Note the post came from "SomeRobotGuy", who, I'll bet, is also in on this gag.
The server was supposed to get slashdotted to hell and not work properly, as that lends an air of credibility to the hack.
You're all part of a campaign directed at people like us who read Slashdot, ArsTechnica, HardOCP, and Wired. Chances are this site will make the rounds on all the hardcore tech sites, and if it makes a few people consider buying a Mini-Cooper, then the Stealth Marketing guys have done their job.
Believe me, this won't be the last time you're "hacked" by Marketing types who are getting more clever about how to direct an advertising campaign at you without you even realising you're being advertised to.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
A 1500 lb anything is not going to be particularly quiet when it's moving... heck, I have a cat that makes more noise than that thing does.
This is about as real as a 9 dollar bill.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Of course, I'd love to be wrong (I hope I am, I'd love to see such a robot out and about working), but until we get some independent, trustworthy verification I'll take this cum grano salis (...with a grain of salt.)
The difference in shadow casting between the two objects, when they are both at roughly the same location, is so dramatic that it could not possibly be anything but a hoax.
I had a really long post that I was going to type about disproving the "robot stopping the jeep" through some ideal physics calculations, but my computer locked up on me (and I was lacking an initial velocity value for the Jeep). However, if anyone's a Physics guru and wants to give it a go, I compiled some initial data for it:
Weight of Jeep: ~1800kg.
Weight of Robot (assuming it's still about the same weight as the car it was made from): ~1483kg.
Coefficient of Friction for Car on pavement:
Coefficient of Friction for robot on pavement: ???
(Anyone know the M
Time before stop: ~1.5sec
So what we'd really need is the coeff. of Kinetic Friction for metal on pavement, the initial velocity of the Jeep, and... can't think of anything else. We could then figure out the force, under ideal conditions, that the robot must have been under. My wager is that the force would be significant. But the light difference, as shown in the video linked to above, is proof enough I think. I'll believe the Robot story when I physically touch the thing.
-Vendal Thornheart
Simple scaling laws that should be known by any engineer tell why bipeds of that size are not a good idea to begin with.
With increasing size the time constant of motion changes (froude number) making larger robots inherently slower. Also other laws indicate that the influence of gravition grows larger, make the robot difficult to control and prone to damage.
There are reasons why nature has not created bipeds of that size.
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
Yes. Because if it was American it would've shot all it's allies...
It's a bit bizarre that you can't see any webpages, but you can still download the movie files using direct links.
I'm surprised how fast all the flaws with the video were exposed by readers here. How did Linus's Law go again... "With enough eyeballs, all fakery is shallow"...?