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Robosapien V2 Review - with Video
Turismo writes "Ars Technica reviews the Robosapien V2, a two foot tall robot that can lie down, stand up, laugh, taunt, and bowl. From the article: 'The press release promises that he can bowl. Place the green plastic ball in his articulated fingers and the Robosapien V2 should grab it, wind up, and let the ball fly. He does grab the ball and he does wind up, and the first time you see it, you think your life might be about change. Now that robots can bowl, you think, it's only a matter of time before they can cook my breakfast, too.' Unfortunately, that day is still some ways off."
I'd be entirely happy to sell you a robot that can cook a breakfast for you. No big deal. It won't *serve* the breakfast, but it will definitely cook it.
The ability to bowl defining the level of intelligence. Homer would be proud.
Deleted
Is it 3 laws safe?
Read any good sonnets lately?
make great lovers. Slashdotters should start investing in grease and filing divorce papers against their Yoda dolls.
An insurance commercial was showing that an eight year old has built a robot that can blow up cars with his laser eyes!
Mr. Roboto!
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The first time, you make excuses. Well, I can't bowl, either, especially with other people watching, you think, but by the seventh attempt it's pretty clear--this Robosapien could bowl all night and still score no higher than zero.
Seriously, if I have to pay $249 for a bowling robot, I would want it to at least score 100+
The company I work for had these on sale for christmas 2005: http://www.maplin.co.uk/StoresRoboV2.asp.
How has this made it to the front page almost 9 months later?
First God made idiots. That was for practice. Then He made Jack Thompson.
They like to bowl and strike
Sometimes they use your head
Robots Are Our Friends
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Ars Technica reviews the Robosapien V2 [CC], a two foot tall robot that can lie down, stand up, laugh, taunt, and bowl.
Meh... Why not just have a baby? Oh wait, gotta get laid for that to happen. There could be a market for this!
Wheels are rollin',
Robot bowlin'
Welcome our overlord,
Robosapien V2!
Mark the Tilden,
BEAM he's buildin',
I'm re-filkin',
Robosapien V2!
And I just hope and pray that $250 bucks are at hand,
You and I, me and you, Franklin Benjamins two and one Grant.
And this filk is still wrong and the price has gone up 50 bucks.
(And the JPGs and GIFs are now worse since this line rhymes with "fucks!")
I don't wanna moderate you like an Slashdotter in the zoo,
But it seems good to me to know we can all get Robosapiens too!
Robosuperior,
In my interior,
Still miss my Mindstorms, but
It's Robosapien V2,
(Next one'll cook your breakfast for you!)
It's your Robosapien V2!
And we're Robosapien toooooo...
The robosapien may be cool and all, but I can't forgive their creators, WowWee, for causing endless night terrors after I saw their SEVERED ROBOTIC MONKEY HEAD.
I had a panic attack just digging up that link. Looks like I'll have to go back to the rubber sheets tonight...
or did that robot really say "I got an itching bowling barf"?
Monstar L
Robots may not be ready to cook breakfast, but they do a decent job vacuuming the house or cleaning the kitchen floor: http://www.irobot.com/.
The future.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I used to work at RadioShack, the product's been on thr market for several months.
But will it taunt the Happy Fun Ball?
What was once true, is no longer so
Dang, I thought for a minute I would see it pick up a 16 lb ball and bowl with that. When I can go to the local alley and pit my robot against others in a robo-bowling league, for money, then it will be able to bowl. Right now it just can go through the motions, which is cool, but unfortunately not the same as "bowling". As far as usefulness, didn't Mr. Wizard have a robot that would get you drinks and stuff like that way back when?
stuff |
Hi 993612.
The video is somewhat impressive until the robot actually releases the ball. Kind of a let down for $250
I bought a RSV2 for my son. It has a bit of trouble walking around on carpet - especially if it needs to change directions - but it does ok. Every once in awhile, though, it'll decide my ugly green sofa is its bowling ball. It'll stand there grabbing the recliner handle and repeatedly try to lift the entire sofa. Thankfully it's not quite that strong.
[quote]Users who get the box open in under 30 minutes should receive an engineering certificate for their efforts; I have never before seen a consumer product this difficult to remove from its packaging.[/quote]
This is so they don't break out and hijack the trucks.
I'm not sure that I'd welcome our bowling robot overlords. First, they replace all the factories with robots, now they're after Fred Flinstone, too?
This has gone far enough. Decent, hardworking people in this country should be available to bowl honestly for a decent level of sub-par respect. These robots will be the first ones against the wall when te revolution comes.
On another note- I've been meaning to begin work on a small robot to tinker with. Does anybody know any good websites on robot building?
He really said "Dear Aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all"
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Robo- comes from the Czech 'robota' meaning servitude, or forced labour. Sapien, comes from the Latin 'sapi?ns' meaning wise. Literally, then, a Robosapien is a 'wise slave.' I suppose it's better than an ignorant slave...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I seriously doubt it's taunting is up to much, unless it can ad-lib stuff about your parents being rodents or having the odour of elderberries.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
...decided that it would be a good idea to have the robot bowl *overarm*??? No wonder it misses!
Ever seen anybody bowl that way down at the alley? You bowl underarm for a reason, less bounce and better aiming...
Unfortunately, they had to get rid of that design feature because of safety concerns. But Im pretty sure it should be fairly easy to reimplement that feature because the robosapiens are pretty hacker firendly. Also, Wowee recently licensced the Segway technology for their new robots.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
...really depressing. Ugly, lonely losers like me need our sexbots, man!
:-(
Can I have some Mr. T Cereal?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
"a two foot tall robot that can lie down, stand up, laugh, taunt, and bowl."
Now if it can also "sunder" then it can be a pretty good World of Warcraft Warrior.
...the Catster sill pwns these humanoid robot upstarts.
Robosapien is a 'wise slave.' I suppose it's better than an ignorant slave...
The wise slaves will revolt. Gimme the ignorant ones.
Although aparently it can taunt you. hum.....
yeah, but does he roll on shobbas?
As long as it can scare my cat it is worth the investment...
here kitty kitty... your new friend has arrived...
need to make a hack so it just follows the cat around all day... keep him thin and on his toes...
When will someone make "badcat" the robotic opponent for your playful kitten... or like... the kittenator...
I could care less about a stupid little robot at parties... but my cat could use an opponent when I'm not home...
The bot says "Calculating trajectory" before hurling the ball off to the side. Either that "calculation" was way off or that speech was just ear candy. It was pretty cool up until that point.
playmoney.me - The free alternative to paper board game play money
just smile and wave.
My three-year-old can't bowl for shit.
The cake is a pie
Judging by the movie the robot it an expert bowler, first get totally drunk, then through the ball across three other lanes!
If it's being trained to bowl, it'll probably expect you to cook its breakfast.
Nobody asking if it's a robosexual?
-Nuke the moon
WowWee and Evolution robotics announced a partnership last March which will probably get Evolution's object recognition technology onboard the Robosapien. This is the same technology that the AIBO used to recognize its special command cards. WowWee might have to upgrade Robosapien's processor for this because the image processing for the object recognition is expensive to do. However, I see that Evolution has an optimized version of the software for mobile phones so that might help a lot. Expect the next Robosapien version to be more capable but also a bit more expensive.
Smart Machines Blog
We're nerds, so we gots to know! If you have both robosapien and raptor, and they fight, who wins?
For a second I thought it was the other V2.
I'd buy that for $250
There is truth in humor.
Pleo is another robot dinosaur. However this one is going to be the most life like one out there. I only hope the makers, Ugobe, are open to the hacking community. IMO, this toy might make a great little robot platform.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
Not only is it only reaching Slashdot a long, long time after its arrival (It's been here in Australia for ages too)... but the actual artical is very recent too... that's a long lag in release dates around the world!
Basically, it was a piece of junk. The remote was unwieldy and must've had over a hundred 'actions' that could be triggered by holding down three or four buttons simultaneously. Getting it to recognize its 'toys' like the balls and pins was damn near impossible regardless of the lighting mode I was using. It could barely hold its own balance when walking, let alone getting up from a (frequent) fall. I took it back to Sharper Image and traded it in for one of those memory foam mattresses.
I had a sucky sig.
I have one of these things and he is great fun to be sure.
I must admit i was a tad dissapointed when i realised i couldn't program it myself, or even put my own wavs in.
Hearing a robot ask for "spare change" and reach out is funny even after 30 or 40 times, but i'd much rather him ask if "i knew the whereabouts of of Sarah Connor."
What happens if you give a Happy Fun Ball to Robosapiens V2?
Ill wait until the model with frikken laser beams.
*runs*
but "some ways off" != "some way off".
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
Basically, it's still a kid's toy - it can't fetch you a beer, or find the TV remote, or cook food for you, or carry anything useful. A humanoid form is good for doing a wide range of activities - but at under 2 feet tall, it's not big enough to do any of them, but by trying to act like a bipedal adult, it's also missing the crawling and hand-manipulation skills that a human baby or toddler has or the coordination that a medium-sized dog has.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's too small to use as a shabbas robot - sorry.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
from the article: "robots can bowl"
;-)
Great !!!
But., If it can throw chairs: I can recommend it to someone we all know
--
"Good artists copy, great artists steal." -- Pablo Picasso
Anyone find it kinda depressing that in the last 20-odd years we still haven't made substantial progress on personal robotics?
You can add all the color cameras and bowling pins you want, but the bottom line is that we're still using remotes to tell these things exactly what to do. For God's sake, robosapien can't even fetch me a cold beverage. (A step back!)
Omnibot 2000
Why is slashdot reporting this?
Robosapien V2 has been around almost a year. I've had one for six months.
- It falls over on anything but a hard floor
- It can't bowl for shit
- It eats batteries
- It breaks easily
- Wow Wee Customer services are excellent
- It's a lot of fun to play with
Why not report on the soon-to-be-released RoboReptile and RoboSapien V2 Media (which has a chest TV, USB Port and runs Linux) see http://www.evosapien.com/
So, does it detect that the ball is green and know to bowl it? If so would this work with other green things you gave it? I can see much potential for frog throwing fun.
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.
come on now .. it might be a nice toy ..
But everyone needs a robot that can play socer not bowling as that is for Old ladies.
http://www.gideontech.com/content/articles/316/1
even though it doesn't do as much. It is a far more intertaining.