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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."
Is that the only companies willing to do any practical research in robotics is car companies because they use robotics on such a daily basis (the building of cars, of course).
Not only that, robotics is one of the most fun branches of modern computing and engineering, and yet so few engineers actually go into it. It's a shame we aren't meeting up with more robots in real life (Fast foods should be relegated to robotics by now, as the food quality tends to resemble it)...
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
I like the idea, but does it fall over and break when the batteries die? Are they going to add a third wheel for safety reasons. (LOL)
Most industrial robots I've seen don't need a humanoid form at all, and I can imagine several cases were the humanoid form is actually an impairment to getting work done. Why not go with more structurally efficient designs, like a spider, instead of focusing on bipedal bots for uses requiring ambulation?
Software piracy is victimless theft.
Can it do my laundry? Can it Walk the dog? Can it cook my meals? Hrmm... Guess its not a replacement for Wife 1.0, I never shoulda upgraded in the first place.
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My thoughts exactly. Imagine how much faster things would be if I could go to a McDonalds, punch in what I wanted on the screen, swipe my card, and wait for the robots to put the food together. You could reduce the staff of such an operation from ten people to two, and the food quality would be identical. Of course, this would also be upfront cost for the companies, and would hurt the economy undoubtedly as it would require the firing of multiple thousands of people, but we'd have a progress in technology.
I guess to sum it up best, I WANT MY DAMNED FLYING CAR.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
could be "trained" for practical office and factory use in as little as five to six years. Or is this how long it normally takes.....
Semper ubi sub ubi
Your VCR also actually works. It also has an extremely limited and unambitious feature set.
That's not to say that the Japanese robots aren't major accomplishments; they are. So is a VCR, if you think about it. Just not when you stack it up against the goal of creating true AI, which is what Cog is all about, "humanoid intelligence."
I Want To Believe
I first misread the summary as, "...has a vocabulary of about 100 words and could be trained for political office use..."
(Of course, my first thought was that that's vastly overqualified for what it apparently takes to be elected President these days.)
Back in the mid/late '90s, there was a Taco Bell near me that installed touch screen ordering stations. You'd get your receipt with a number on it, and a few minutes later you'd hear your number called and maybe barely glimpse a human figure darting back behind the large wall that completely obscured the kitchen area. Then you'd retrieve your order from the very small counter where your food had been placed. In retrospect it was an odd clinical dehumanization of something still carried out by humans. Unless there were robots back there, I guess, one of which was dressed in a purple shirt and a wig.
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
To me, the saddest part about all this is that the only companies willing to do any practical research in robotics are Japanese car companies because they look farther into the future than the next quarterly earnings report. The Japanese car companies are pumping R&D dollars into developing new technologies that will help them in the long run. The American car companies are taking that money and pumping it into bonuses for CEOs so they can buy a new ivory backscracther every year.
Face it, we just don't have the drive to improve that companies in other countries do.
GMD
watch this