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Robots Put on Show at World Robot Expo in Japan
rjelks writes "The World Robot Expo is going on right now in Japan. The exhibition is displaying prototypes of robots that draw, dance and mimic humans. Developers believe that growth in the robotics industry will grow rapidly in the coming decade. They hope that soon robots will become a common occurrence in our homes."
No way!
Robots! at a robot expo!
What is the world coming too?
vv
Karma: Bad. Calmer, good.
It's not "World Robot Expo", it's just the "World Expo", they are showing off plenty of things besides robots.
Monstar L
As seen on engadget!
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000563046382/
Of couse, the linux crowd would make theirs out of duct tape and plastic....
They hope that soon robots will become a common occurrence in our homes
Woah! hang on... buddies..
For example
Tennoji High School in Osaka, central Japan, will receive 50 million yen (US$460,000; euro376,000) over three years in government money meant to produce technological whiz kids.
Japan has budgeted 1.3 billion yen (US$12 million; euro9.8 million) a year for the program, splitting the money between 82 high schools, which are using their grants to focus on rocket engineering, genetics and solar energy.
If other countries too follow Japan, by giving importance to education, well, maybe Robots will be a 'common occurance' soon...
my 2c
Every decade we hear that robots will be commonly used within the house within the next decade. And then another decade passes, and we're still not using robots. I'm sure the technology will eventually arive, but maybe we should let things run their course. Instead of promising that they'll be popular within x many years or decades, let's just say they will be popular someday.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
another robot mimicking humans was unavailable for comment
There is truth in humor.
I don't need a dancing robot, or a drawing robot. I need a fruit picking robot. Strawberries, raspberries, cherries, apples, etc.
A weed pulling robot sounds good too. If it can tell a pigweed from a cucumber, there is a market for it.
Just our luck humans end up with the field work, and the robots end up sitting on their ass spewing Vogon-class poetry, and telling us the reason we don't like it is our lack of a classical education.
I saw a number of robots during my 5+ hrs at EXPO and hope to actually get into the Toyota pavillion (130min wait time)to see their song and dance routine when I go again tomorrow.
The ones I saw included a tour guide robot that was, if you can imagine, like one of those old dime store fortune tellers except it looked like a japanese real doll (tm) flight attendant done up in a lime green suit and hat. You could ask it for directions to venues using voice command (japanese only of course) and it would give you verbal directions. With my piss poor understanding of Japanese, I could not make out if it was giving the right answers or not, but the voice seemed like a pre recorded message. I guess the thing did not understand, or had difficulty with background noise as quite often people would have to repeat their questions a few times, slower and closer to the mic which was basically a mesh ball mounted to the counter in front of the robot.
It's movements were for lack of a better word, robotic and they didn't do the skin very well as it looked like satin silicon. It did do decent facial expressions while it was talking and from the looks on peoples faces, i guess it did a good job of matching facial experessions to dialogue. Again there was about a 20 min wait to get to try it out.
Another one I did see was in front of the India pavillion and it was what you would expect a robot to look like from the sixties all shiny red plastic and black lexan. It had a huge bubble head and arms of a sort that moved slightly. This one too would give you directions of a sort and answer a few other questions as well as respond to people's proximity and stop moving if you were very close so you could have your picture taken with it. There was an attendant minding it to help people in it's usage and to keep kids from climbing aboard for a free ride as it ws on wheels and moved very slowly around what I imagine was a pre defined path although I could not see any magnetic tape on the ground or a remote in the attendants hand.
flinging poop since 1969