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Next-gen Robot Toys to Fetch Beer

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the finally-something-useful dept.

FleaPlus writes "The Boston Globe reports that WowWee Toys, the creators of robots like the hack-friendly Robosapien series, has announced a collaboration with Evolution Robotics. WowWee's next generation of robots will make use of Evolution's tech for visual object recognition and indoor navigation, hopefully with future versions being able to not just entertain, but also 'perform useful tasks such as fetching a beer or even helping to carry the groceries.'"

2 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Offtopic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Quick Java question:

    I apply Accelerator keys to jMenuItems. They work correctly and all, eg, I press ESC and the appropriate actionListener is called.

    However: when profiling my app I noticed that each key press was calling a sleep function. Turns out that every key press that uses that accelerator causes the swing event thread to pause for 68 milliseconds. Is there an easy way to get rid of this default behaviour and instead incur no sleep time at all? The 68 ms looks to be hard-coded in AbstractButton or somesuch. I think.

  2. Re:Nice by MarkChovain · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Comparing a 60 cycle AC 50 horse motor with the high frequency ac motor used in the new Toyota Prius will show a huge size and weight diffrence even though the horsepower is close to the same. You have to accept the authority of the service for free, colletc our monopoly and restore service when it comes to actually closing the deal on the back of someone who was wearing a battery powered machine in freezing cold temperatures...