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Bipedal Dinosaur Robot

Posted by Zonk on from the my-birthday-is-coming-up dept.

News for nerds writes "AIST and NEDO announced they have developed 2 bipedal dinosaur robots for the EXPO 2005 Aichi, Japan(Mar.25-Sep.25). PC Watch has an article with pics/movies and TBS News has a movie. Tyrannosaurus Rex and Parasaurolophus are modeled as 3.5m/80kg robots, and cost $1.8 million to build. They can roar and walk with an artificial pounding sound, but not as fearsome as Mechagodzilla. The external skin is designed by Kokoro Co., Ltd. and the endoskelton is developed by Kawada Industries, Inc. which is the manufacturer of the HRP-2 Humanoid Robot."

3 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Re:feh... by millennial · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not quite. Disney's robot was not independently bipedal - it was balanced by a huge counterweight in the cart it pulled.

    So... how long until we have a bunch of these go haywire and eat people in a theme park somewhere?

    P.S. ... Hey Japan, wtf? What's with the robots? Soccer players, rollerskaters, dancers, sumos, dinosaurs... where's my robot butler, eh??

    --
    I am scientifically inaccurate.
  2. Re:feh... by Carrierwave · · Score: 2, Informative

    Except that this one is actually bipedal. The Disneysaur needs to hang onto that cart or he'll topple over. Plus all the computer brains for him are hidden under the flowers in the cart. As a standalone dinosaur, he'd never work.

  3. MIT prior art by guero · · Score: 2, Informative

    Given that this story submission is several hours old, my post is probably going to be neglected in mod point purgatory. Nevertheless, an arguably more interesting dinosaur robot was created by Peter Dilworth at the MIT leg laboratory. See pics and vids of Troody the dinosaur robot here: http://alpha-bits.ai.mit.edu/people/chunks/chunks. html