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Skiing Robot May Not Be Useful, But Fun To Watch
kkleiner writes "Bojan Nemec from the Jozef Stefan Institute in Slovenia recently presented his skiing robot at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). The robot won't be winning skiing records anytime soon and its usefulness as a ski instructor or in any other capacity seems quite a ways off. Nonetheless, the videos of this robot taking a ride down the ski slopes are well worth watching. In case you are wondering, this is a completely different robot than the one Slashdot covered earlier."
And it hardly ever snows here.
Let's see it do an Olympic size ski jump!
Can it ski on cheese?
This is nothing new. I've strapped many an unsuspecting robot to a pair of skis and shoved it down a hill. They get down just fine without any of your fancy whirring gizmo's.
Turns out it works for other things too. Campers, bears, trick-or-treaters and the Law.
Compare this simple robot to the high-tech Japanese one covered by Slashdot earlier. Makes one realize the difference in research money available to the Slovenians versus to the Japanese.
are all down hill from here
Soon it will race the captain of the ski team to save the mountain from the giant corporation and get the fembot.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/blog/robotics/robotics-software/automaton/skiing-robot-races-down-slope
It all starts at 0
how do you get funding? Is your daddy influential? I want some (for something more useful, and along the same lines as your skiier) CONTACT ME, I dare you. gpscOSPAMruise@gmail.com
That guy is seriously going to regret that now that this page is on slashdot, lol.
And both make you realize how much processing power the brain actually has. There are people that do this at the Olympics that do it better and faster.
All taken in with two little tiny organic cameras and processed in something that only weighs a few pounds.
This sort of nonsense is taking time and effort away from truly valuable sexbot research. This is a totally irresponsible use of scarce money and talent.
Will a robotic St. Bernard assist in case of avalanche?
US2B
This is Slashdot for god's sake, here we are allowing *skiing* to get between us and *fembots* ?? Think of the geeks!!!
On a more serious note, if you have sex with a sexbot... does that make you not a virgin?
+1 Disagree
Skiing Robot May Not Be Useful, But Fun To Watch
Sounds like a Jessica Beal movie about skiing.
Wright brothers sand-sailing contraption pretty gol-durned worthless. This is the last straw, I'm resigning the patent office because everything worth inventing has been.
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> It might sound like I spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff, but I don't.
And yet, you are surprisingly fluent in the small details involved in both design and execution. Fair to say where there's smoke....there's chaffing of the loins - just don't get too excited over the in 's & out's, ok?
OK OK before you mod me down hear me out.
This can be used to provide some really good coverage of ski sports if you mount a camera on it. Imagine the kind of angles this can follow if this was one of the 'fellow skiers'.
I think ESPN or winter Olympics coverage folks can definitely make good use of this technology in situations where human beings cannot be present with a reasonably decent photography equipment.
We are always correct.. even when we realize we were wrong.
It seems like the gist of the article and review are assuming this is random and useless technology. Who knows what kind of cool stuff could come out of this.
In the coming Robot Apocalypse (tm) I was planning to flee to a snowier clime, knowing full well that my bipedal and wheeled adversaries would not be able to easily pursue me. Indeed, I had visions of blasting the mechanical horrors with my trusty shotgun as they slipped, tumbled and performed various pratfalls, or otherwise became bogged down in the glorious white stuff. I counted on them becoming flustered and immobile, rather like a Dalek faced with a steep flight of stairs. But no! You had to go and teach them how to ski. Next you'll likely make them with self-deploying and self waxing skis. And doom the entire human race to robot servitude.
Sloveeeennnniaaaaaaaaaa!
I think that this robot really does have something to offer for skiing instruction contrary to the original post.
To me, it looks like the robot is focused on keeping the acceleration due to gravity between the skis. I know it must be considering the centripetal force, Yet it does not seem capable of 'hanging it out there', in a turn steep enough to support an acc due to gravity that doesn't point between the skis. I think this is part of what's holding it back, and if so it would mean a snowboarding robot wouldn't work as well with the same tech.
Shiro Shimzo (University of Fuk UI) -spacing mine- where another skiing robot is being developed.
Isn't that university in Redmond?
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you are shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Needs more "Panka, Panka"
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
Tell that to the military. You think they train only in the desert? BigDog needs skis!
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
Now build a robot that can snowboard...
...wipes out in a spectacular way. It's like watching humans wipe out, but without the pain of guilt and empathy.
Table-ized A.I.
From the video it appears that it missed the last gate. It seems to identify a gate, maneuver around it and try to counter back to identify the next gate which seems like the logic you would use. Its hard to see what looks like the last gate as there appears to be a person standing behind it and maybe that is what threw it off, but it looks like it over steered on the second to last gate and could not identify the last gate because of it.
But can it ski on the waves of the IP traffic generated as a result of posting this article on slashdot?
I for one welcome our new alpine automaton masters.
Noone. Nothing. Nowhere.
it's a known fact that the moon is populated by at least one steampunk robot capable of skiing much better than that. The expedition led by Cmdr. Gromit brought us those videos a long time ago,
Now we just need a robot that can ski AND golf, and we could replace all the managers in the world.
This is the harbinger of the robot revolution. The harbinger, I tell you!
Skis closer together, lead ski forward into the turn, and for gods sake Robot keep your shoulders facing the fall line!
I won't even comment on your pole technique... oh wait, you have no arms.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
How many times has James Bond escaped on skis? I count at least three times. Skiing robot + sentry gun = no more bond, if you have them knocked out in the hundreds by toy companies anyway.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But can it ski through a revolving door?