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Korean Bipedal Robot Kit
The Black Dragon writes "This has got to be the coolest thing I've seen in a while. It's a bipedal (walks on two legs) robot that you can put together yourself and program with movements. The site is in Korean, but from what I've been able to get from translators and currency exchange, it'll cost about $1,400. (There's a movie embedded half way down.)" Gizmodo has a blurb.
Ohhh Boy, embedded video on the web page. That site will be smoked QUICK!
Here is a link that shows what appears at a glance to be a superior robot model from Japan doing all kinds of neat tricks. It has 22 Degrees of Freedom rather than the 17 DOF in the robot from Wow Robot. This page also has video, but they are all links at the bottom of the page.
I agree that one of these would be great fun to play with!
Urge to post... fading... fading... RISING!... fading... fading... gone.
Now, think of what I could do if I had 2 extra hands, I could eat pizza, play video games, and browse the internet all at the same time.. not to mention all the other things you guys could come up with
Seriously, if it wasn't for the $1000+ pricetag that'd be the hit new toy this comming xmas!
Don't have Korean installed. North or South?
I know what I'm doing this weekend!
my new robot over--. Wait, we're in charge here. THE ROBOTS WELCOME US!
...she's a replicant, isn't she?
This robot reminds me a lot of the build-it-yourself Lego machines thay have been produced for a number of years now. The kits provide you with the base legos, along with motors, gears, and a nifty computer interface device that lets you write programs for a robot to execute.
The legos were a lot of fun, but the batteries for the remote/receiver never lasted that long.
This could be a nice next-generation version of the lego system, or it could turn into (brace yourself) this.
Any idea if this is equiped with Genuine People Personality? :-)
That is an interesting approach. Basically it looks like their robot is a framework for servos. There's almost nothing to it but servo mounts that are connected to each other.
The video is impressive, but are we watching a simple playback of a preprogrammed sequence? In that case, no dynamic "balancing" is necessary.
A robot with true balance would have to be MUCH more sophisticated.
Who want's a kidney? I'm willing to sell a kidney to get this thing.
Note: I didn't say "I'm willing to sell one of my kidneys to get this thing.". What do you care where the kidney comes from?
bipedal (walks on two legs)
/. crowd.
I'm glad they included that definiton for the
Yeah, cause otherwise, I would have thought it was a bike that swings both ways.
can I install slackware on it?
That said, you can get a cheaper one. They are not as good, but... they're cheaper. Lynxmotion's Biped, or the less fancy Parallax Todler.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
As of this writing US $1 = 1,149.25 South Korean Won. That makes the robot US $1261.69.
Because I want a robot army.
Have fun programming a billion dollars worth of those things.
function dstry_enmy($target) { send_fire_signal(adj_arms(eyes_loc($target))); }
I've seen these from another company.
You must program each individual joint one by one, trial and erre style.
No feedback, no sensors, no remote control!
just memory for the movements
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
.kr domains are South Korea, while .kp is reserved for North Korea (don't think they actually use it yet, though).
Here's anotherKorean bot kit. Fun stuff. I saw them demo the quad w/RF module. Takes some of the fun out of it, but then again you can concentrate on AI if that's your thing.
English langauge site that says the kit is "Coming Soon" is at http://www.kopropo.com/robot_kits.htm
All 17 different joints are powered by a single motor
Really? I had no idea that 17 different servos could be powered by one motor. How interesting.
In case you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic.
given that the page will be smoking in a while, here's
a mirror of the video
I grew up in St. Joseph, MI down the street from the Heath/Zenith plant. They released the heathkit HERO robot, the first (this is arguable, Im not really a robot historian) consumer grade robot.
We had one in school, our science teacher had buddies at Heathkit. You programmed it in assembly, via a keypad on the top of the robot. I don't even remember if there was a way to load an instruction set into it, until later models came along.
There is a website dedicated to the good ol Hero. Back then (late 1980s) we were sure that by 2004 we'd all be living with robots like the ones in the new I,Robot movie. I guess it didn't really happen.
It would be cool if the I,Robot bad guy (only seen the trailer, they got THAT GUY, who always plays villans, to play the villan) had a HERO on his desk or something. Esp. since the USR company in the movie is supposed to be in Chicago, right across the lake and home of several Zenith facilities.
The description on the page sucks, but go to your local Best Buy and check out the RoboSapien. Its joints have several degrees of freedom, and the remote looks like a TiVo remote on steroids.
If that's not screaming to be hacked, hooked to a linux box, and used to terrify the cat, I don't know what is. And at 1/14th the price of the Korean `bot. It's not a kit though, which I know is a negative on Slashdot...
How is this different to Robosapien?
Kopropo.com
These little guys were the star of the recent Robolympics in San Francisco (apart from my combat robot that it :) ) - absolutely amazing - some great pictures here.
even if it was all a pre-programmed sequence. The thing's ability to do headstand, bend and lay down face down flat and get back up, and sidle, etc. It makes for some very flexible movements. It's not a utility robot, certainly.
Now imagine a Beowulf cluster of those!
"now, if MS buys off that robot idea and makes it cuter and implants an AI system into it and sells it to every household in the world... we could see the end of the world as we know it."
So, in other words, if Microsoft invents the positronic brain, builds millions of androids, develops a very long lasting power cell for them, sufficiently arms them, and actually programs them to take over the world, then they can end all life on the planet.
"Derp de derp."
North Korea doesn't need the Internet. They only have one computer (circa 1950), and they all share it.
The robot is actually manufactured by Kondo, from Japan:
c ts _kit.html
http://www.kopropo.com/robot_kits.htm
Japanese page with more info:
http://www.kopropo.co.jp/html/KONDO/Robot_produ
Wowrobot seems to be just a retailer specialized in robots...
...where the editors need to define "bipedal" for the SlashDot audience? Have we really gotten that much dumbed down?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
I met the guy who builds these at the Robolypmpics back in March. I've got some photos of this guy and his companions, along with some other bipedal robots at http://www.gism.net/photos/gallery/robot/robot.htm l
Don't Crease the Weasel!
Ok, I'm a little less than impressed by how it walks. Essentially it's waddling, putting it's center of gravity over one "pad" (or foot), moving the other, and then moving the COG to the other pad. Admittedly, this is a decent hack, and it does work.
Stand up, lift up your left foot, and lean to your left without putting down your left foot. It's obsurdly obvious you'll fall down because your center of gravity has shifted to much. This method does work for the robot, and it's not a "hack", because it's the exact same way you walk. It may not be that graceful, but the basic procedure we all use is being mirrored.
Since it's clear that this thing likely its tethered to it's controller...
You're unimpressed with the way it walks, so you've watched the clip on the page. Yet, you've watched the clip on the page and somehow missed completely that it wasn't tethered to anything at all?
I wonder if it would be possible to put more servos in controlling the angle of the pad. Then the pad comes down, and the unit senses if it's tipping, and corrects.
Congratulations. You just described fairly exactly how it works already.
In theory this should produce less waddling, and more realistic walking, right?
Since your theory is how it currently opperates, I'm going to guess the answer is.. no.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
There is nothing to stop someone from building a knock off of this kit. Except maybe your math (17 joints = 17 motors) =].
The only thing that appears to be special about the servos is the position sensing. Based on someones translation of the page, you can program the robot by positioning its limbs and clicking a mouse button.
Since the servos only have three leads coming out of them (white, black and red like a regular RC servo) I'm going to guess that the servos are gutted of their electronics and their functionality is integrated into the controller. This would benefit the robot by reducing unecessary weight at the limbs (those nifty kung f u moves) and allow you to sense the positions of the limbs.
In a homebrew project the internal electronics in the servo are what make RC servos so attractive. You can get a positionable, speed regulated geartrain in a very compact package for very little money compared to fabricating your own. So unless you modify each servo you would have to give up the position sensing programability (which I could live with).
That said, if my guess is correct, it may be easier to make one of these things self balancing than previously thought since half the needed functionality is there (positioning).
-- Button up, your ignorance is showing