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A Gallery of Unusual Chinese Robots

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the they'll-eat-your-medicine dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Chinese engineers have unveiled a series of robots lately — without releasing lots of technical details about them. In the past two months, I've gathered pictures of robots which can act as waiters in restaurants in Hong Kong or pull rickshaws near Beijing. I've also found a four-finger robotic hand able to play organ, a female robot greeting tourists visiting the Sichuan Science Museum with 'ni hao' ('How are you?' in Mandarin — if my sources are correct), and even a robotic chimpanzee."

3 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. How are you? by CrazyJim1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I asks how you're doing, but doesn't care.

    --
    God spoke to me.
  2. Pointless by PavementPizza · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There are 1.3 billion Chinese; what do they need robots for? Just round up some dissidents.

    --
    Viper is the preferred editor of the Emacs operating system.
  3. Re:The day will come by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Have you ever bought anything mechanical or with more then 5 moving parts from China that was designed in China as well? Like a small gas or electric powered scooter? They are cheap but COMPLETE crap. The cheapness does not offset the crapiness. I hope the chinese are not really that bad at engineering and maybe these things are designed the way they are to save every fraction of a cent. That would make sense I guess because there is no real company name on these and no reputation to protect. The major retailers are not selling these either and the mom and pops and automotive stores that do probably do not have a big enough voice to make a change. Riding the wave I guess. In the long run though, people will eventually stop buying this stuff because of the lack of quality and the importers will have to increase the pressue or move on to a different market and product segment and start over again. Oddly enough, more motorized devices are showing up that were designed in China so maybe the lack of quality is not a consideration yet. I've even seen rather expensive off brand generators and pressure washers as well. I feel bad for the people that are going to rely on those though. I wonder if people in China are happy with the quality of this stuff?