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Hitachi Unveils Humanoid Robot
HunahpuMonkey writes "BBC reports that Hitachi has unveiled a humanoid robot, named Emiew, to compete with Honda's Asimo and Sony's Qrio robots. The robot has a vocabulary of about 100 words and could be trained for practical office and factory use. In addition, it is the fastest robot to date, moving 3.7 miles per hour on wheel feet which resemble the bottom half of a Segway scooter."
The problem with these robots is how fragile they are. I havent physically seen the other two robots, but Honda's Asimo stays in a little closet when in the lab. Not your typical closet of course, but you get the idea. When in the lab, all you see are other cheaper parts of robots similar or duplicated from Asimo. All the work and main testing is done on these pieces (which makes sense). The thing that I don't like though, and many people don't realize, is that before Asimo is ever unveiled to the public, he undergoes at least 8 hours of configuration. This is each and every time, and then he can only run for maybe an hour and a half iirc. These robots certainly have a lot of potential, and one day possibly could do factory work, but right now the public is being mislead thinking we are further along then we really are. People see this robot and think it probably just walks around all day and they'd like one. There are certainly some huge milestones being made, but the most publically known robots are imho overhyped. I'm not being a pessimist, I would just like to see even more reasearch in humanoid robotics so we can have the future sooner rather then later. Even just a self configuring Asimo would be a huge step in the right direction.
Regards,
Steve
RUR is a german play whos script was published as a book. Its about how a company sold robots for work in factories and offices and as secretaries. It ended up destroying the earth.
This just made me think of it, Great read!
For walking, it is. With two you have to deal with vast amounts of balance problems, and its not easy to correct. With eight (or six, or four) you can move a pair of legs without having to worry about stability, because it still has all the rest to fall back on. Controlling the legs isn't the complex part, the motions for walking on two legs are vastly complex compared to simple patterns for four, six, and eight.