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NAO Humanoid Robot Set To Hit the Market
KentuckyFC writes "Earlier this year, Paris-based Aldebaran-Robotics picked up $8 million in venture capital funding to help commercialize its NAO humanoid robot. The target market for this device is research labs working on the next generation of robotic hardware and software. Today, the company has posted a detailed spec of NAO on the arXiv saying that it expects the robot to cost about $15,000 each. That's cheap compared to other humanoids. Fuitsu's HOAP humanoids cost $50,000 each and various estimates price Honda's Asimo at $1 million per bot, although they are not for sale. Aldebaran-Robotics says that NAO's cost should come down to about $6,000 as production ramps up."
A hundred years from now, whether the readers are C or Fe, they will get a feeling of nausea reading about the 'retail prices' of 'humanoids.'
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
The company that manufactures Real Dolls better watch out.
If it can't reach the beer in the fridge, then who really cares.
Asimov's universe has robots being banned on Earth, robot colonies dying, and robotics itself dying as well, with R. Daneel Olivaw being the only remaining robot in a galaxy with no non-human sentient life (except on Gaia, where everything is sentient).
I think Asimov's robots will be about as like the real future's robots as his Multivac is to the internet. I don't see robots being banned.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Thusly, I greet our robotic humanoid overlords with bowed neck and outstretched palms.
"You are not needed. Report to termination facility 44657."
You are right that robots are built to serve a specific purpose, but keep in mind that most robotic functions are ones that were previously done by us humans. So it's quite possible that one day we will want a robot that performs some human task that requires human proportions, such as carrying our bags while at the same time navigating stairs and fitting through doorways or even into cars.
Of course, we could also want robots for companionship, in the same way people find comfort in pets. But in that case, we'd design the robot to look like Robin Williams.
Now instead of worrying about being attacked by botnets, we'll have to worry about getting attacked from robotnets. Wonderful.
Just as with architecture and automotive engineering task, they need to do robotics with virtual systems, using physics models instead of using hardware.
Specialized robots are useless outside their function, and are thus just expensive deadweight when not in use. For example, a Roomba is great at vacuuming a floor, but when the floor is clean it can't do anything else. It can't carry boxes or wash dishes. You'd need additional robots for those specialized tasks, and they're going have the same "deadweight" problem as the Roomba too.
A humanoid robot would be able to do any physical job that a human could do. Such robots would be versatile enough to be useful all the time. A single humanoid robot vacuums the floor, then it carries boxes, and then washes dishes, and then etc etc etc. A humanoid robot would always be useful in some way, and thus more efficient in the long run.
Which part of life do you find so beautiful? Is it when a female mantis bites off the head of the male as his body keeps copulating? Perhaps it's the birds that nest so close to each other on cliffs that sometimes when a mother isn't looking a neighbor will lean over and eat her chick as a nice tasty meal that didn't require the other mother to leave her own nest. Or maybe it's the Cuckoo bird which leaves its egg in the nest of another bird and after hatching pushes all the others out of the nest and kills them. No, I bet it's when a new male lion takes over a pride and kills all the cubs before they can get old enough to challenge him. How about various parasites that take over a host body and make them more apt to be eaten so the parasite can gain entry to a new species of stomach. No wait, it must be because embryology is so finicky that many children are born freakishly disfigured and get to live a brief agonizing existence before being killed by their own bodily dysfunctions.
People need to get over this naive idea of nature as pure and beautiful. Some parts of it are very beautiful but not all of it. It's the same idea as the noble savage. As if modernity hadn't screwed everything up we'd still be living in a natural paradise like Eden.
Guess what. It's just not true. The universe and nature in general doesn't give a damn about us.
Why is it that when robots don't act like something out of a fantasy movie people are a little disappointed? Get a grip on reality man. There is obviously a huge disconnect between the reality of robotics and fantasy.
Think of it this way - you're wondering why you can't get the really slick aqua theme on your desktop when the people writing the actual software are still working on getting a working 3-color display!
I don't see the appeal to having a humanoid robot.
Because we want them to operate in a world that (1) humans are well adapted to and (2) that has in places been adapted to be specifically human-compatible.
Functional designs like the roomba are all very well, but can they ascend stairs? Operate a door handle? Press buttons positioned for humans to use? Pick up a variety of objects without needing special manipulators?
And that's just what you'd need for a robot to go to the coffee machine and bring me a coffee, stopping off at the mail room to get my mail.
No doubt, if you want to travel fast wheels are better than legs. But to do human-like tasks in human-adapted buildings, you've got to expect to end up with some human-like design elements.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
If you have a job that can be replaced by a robot we can assume two things:
1. Its boring
2. Its going to be replaced by foreign labor anyways.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
This is Slashdot. People who are will to pay so much money (or at least, wish they had the money free) for a "very expensive hackers toy" aren't really a rare commodity here.
The NAO isn't cheap-- that $15000 "is only the first installment". Teams wanting to use that unfortunate winner of the RoboCup tender have to pay almost as much again for the CLOSED-SOURCE SDK and training courses /per programmer/. There were fully free-software tender nominations that were only marginally more expensive (initially, and no hidden charges afterwards), and the predominately University-based researchers just wondered what the hell was going on for NAO to win the RoboCup contract.
As for the claim of $6000 each 'in mass production'... I can't see the separately-sourced high-quality motors that cost ~$500 each, making up 90% of the materials cost, dropping massively in price when they're already in mass production.
Probably weight. A human-sized one would probably take a crane to move.