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Linux-powered Robots From France? Oui!
An anonymous reader writes "A French start-up created to build autonomous, easily programmable, affordable humanoid robots expects to ship its first product — a humanoid household service robot running Linux — in early 2007. The walking, talking, WiFi-enabled Nao household robot will stand 21.6 inches tall, and will feature 23 "degrees of freedom" of motion — three more than the 14-inch tall Choromet android announced earlier this week by four Japanese companies. Nao's extra degrees of freedom appear to come in the form of gripping hands."
We may jest, but the French do have a long history of engineering. From the Eiffel Tower to Airbus, they have a good track record. I believe that the first ever hot air baloon flight was also there in the 18th century.
I am not usually a fan of the French, but I have to admit that they do a pretty good job of building stuff. Of course, I still prefer American engineering, but we seem to be lagging in the robot business.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
I've seen motion sensitive camera software...how tricky would it be to mod this robot into a motion sensing attack robot with a motion sensitive firearm or bomb thrower? Has anyone attempted this tricky of a project? Is the motion sensing software (and facial recognition software) accurate enough to target soft vital areas, such as the eyes, on a fast moving target? Could these robots be useful as attack robots, especially since there doesn't seem to be any use for robots aside from housekeeping and defusing bombs, and the bomb defusing robots are RC...Is there already a linux project that accomplishes any of these goals, that could run on this or a similar platform? Or even better, an already built weapon with a camera that didn't need any modding...
The use of humanoid robots will be limited to pointless tasks (greeters at Walmart)in the future. They are difficult to make, difficult to maintain (mechanically) and won't ever match the abilities of humans as long as we keep them "humanoid". The cost will never be less than the minimal benefits. You'd be better off with holograms for greeters once the technology is ironed out. In fact, for virtually any human/sentient machine interaction you're better off with holograms or VR. The only need for robotics is when you're dealing with physical interaction with objects (assembly or dangerous tasks) or people (surgery, sex bots built like spiders with sexy female human legs in black hosiery and the head of Amanda Donohoe, and let's face it... combat). And in every instance, the humanoid form is not that great. I want my robotic surgeon to have lasers built into his multiple tendrils (hopefully a few million of them) and nanoscale filaments that can perform cellular level cuts and sutures. No humanoid android will ever have that ability. Humanoid robots are overrated. Now if you want some applications for humanoid androids, I hear Disney has some openings in the "It's a Small World" display...
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Mechanical Nerd here, and mech's are highly unlikely. Scaling up an object doesn't increase stresses linearly, but more like a polynomial. In other words, just cuz it works small doesn't mean making it bigger and scaling everything equally will work.
For instance, an ant, scaled up to be a foot long, wouldn't be able to hold up its own weight, the legs would be too weak. Thanks Bill Nye ^_^