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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.
I know what I'm doing this weekend!
...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.
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.
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
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.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
When you consider things like Segway costing thousands, and video cards costing $400-$500 and high-end MP3 players at $500+, $1400 is not all that much more. Think of it a different way...5 years ago, you'd pay $2500 for a PII...
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...
This is going to be the best prom ever!
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.
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...