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New HRP-4 Humanoid Robots From Japan To Go On Sale
An anonymous reader writes "Kawada Industries and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology have unveiled their new humanoid robot, HRP-4. The new humanoid stands 151cm tall and is much thinner than its predecessors. For Japan, HRP-4 is another step forward in creating useful mechanical workers to deal with a forthcoming shortage in the labor force and care for an aging population. HRP-4's creators expect to start selling the robot to universities and other research institutions as early as January 2011 for a price tag of $300,000, which is not that bad for a humanoid."
The HRP-4s are a whole $100,000 cheaper than Willow Garage's PR2 (non-humanoid) robots, which became available earlier this month. The difference really adds up when building your robot army. Ron Moore could not be reached for comment.
On the whole, I think I'd rather hire an au pair girl.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
If these robots are going to be caring for old people, what will prevent them from stealing old people's medicine?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
This would be real impressive if the video showed the robot actually doing real work.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
It's programmed to detect people trying to upset it's balance, and then kick them in the balls. Hard. Sure, it falls over, but you'll never try that shit again, I guarantee ya!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Will you be able to compensate? You just knocked over 300,000 dollars of hardware.
Adding Afghanistan troops could cost $500000 per person - CNN.com http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/30/afghanistan.costs/index.html a few bullets, use your targets as food, (sorry 'fuel') and bob is your warlord. And people worry about the singularity... @ 300,000.00 it'll be just a factory away from running your own country. Imagine using a stream of these as a Denial Of Service attack on, ok nevermind, the future as the curse says, will be interesting, but not pleasant.
Sadly, Davros's invasion force was stymied when it came across the first set of stairs, and failed miserably. Meanwhile, my invasion force using the HRP-4 went on to become a huge hit on Broadway!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Yeah, but those "real dolls" would be a lot more fun if they'd actually move like a real woman. Plus, they won't clean the house or do the laundry. Women are good for a lot more than sex, you know.
I doubt cuddling with a "real doll" while watching a non-pornographic movie would be very fun. And if all you want is sex, crack whores are better than any sex toys.
Free Martian Whores!
Hmmm,... I guess Japan could try to invent intelligent robots to help their decrepit population, OR they could relax their racist immigration policies and allow immigrants in from Asia...
I wonder which method has the best chance of working (actually I don't, it's fucking obvious to any non idiot)
but when I do, I DRP-4.
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
Dalek's don't navigate stairs. They level the building.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
I think that using robots instead of human beings to fight our wars just sets us up for a situation where 100% of the casualties of war will be civilians.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
These already look about as capable as the droids in the Star Wars movie universe. Now they just need to be programmed to say 'roger roger.'
If the Robot does the dishes and the floors and etc., then neither you nor your lady have to do it, and thusly, get to spend more time exploring the various corners of your sexual identities.
This does, of course, require a ladyfriend, and this is, of course, slashdot, so perhaps I'm being overly optimistic.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I've been thinking robots would be a real problem starting in about 2020 based on current vision and manual dexterity systems progress.
Discussing this elsewhere (and told I was too pessimistic), I came across the following information.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2010/tc2010061_798891.htm
Soon, That Nearby Worker Might Be a Robot
Online retailer Diapers.com employs more than 350 of the robots in three warehouses, and is adding "hundreds per month," says Executive Vice-President Scott Hilton. Retailer Crate & Barrel has purchased Kiva robots to be installed in its Tracy (Calif.) distribution center in July. One reason Crate & Barrel and Diapers.com decided to use Kiva robots is that the robots can work in the dark, reducing carbon emissions and saving money on air-conditioning and lighting. ...
at El Camino Hospital in Silicon Valley, 19 robots fulfill a range of tasks, from delivering medication and food to taking out trash. ...
Hiring as many humans ... would have cost the hospital more than $1 million a year, says Ken King, vice-pr.... Leasing the robots from Aethon costs $350,000 a year, which helps the hospital contain costs and offer patients affordable health care, he says.
The Tug robots pull their weight, say hospital officials. Tugette, for example, rolls through El Camino Hospital's corridors making deliveries around the clock, opening doors, summoning elevators, and speaking politely with workers and patients.
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So let's see.
* Two THIRDs cheaper than humans
* Works 24 hours a day
* Works in the dark
* Doesn't require air conditioning
* Some companies are employing "hundreds of them" with more on the way.
* Replaces humans who go into the warehouse and get things and who stock shelves.
* If you have any kind of SLA, it also basically never gets sick.
And that's NOW. Right now. Already happening- not 10 years from now.
It's going to be very difficult to adjust to this change in less than a generation- if it is even possible to adjust to it at all.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Dalek's don't navigate stairs. They level the building.
Actually, Daleks were making their way up stairs as early as 1965. In "The Chase" they landed on the Mary Celeste at sea - on the main deck. They didn't show the Daleks climbing the stairs, but somehow one wound up on top of the Poop Deck a short while later...
So even though the "Daleks don't climb stairs" thing has been a popular Doctor Who meme over the years, even used in the show, and specifically debunked, first in the Seventh Doctor era and then later with the Ninth... Most of the time it wasn't true. :)
Bow-ties are cool.
Are you implying that a western nation. such as the U.S. perhaps, is better off without people like me that make it a "cultural zoo?" DIAF please.
Japan has a history of disliking Koreans and the Chinese. They let everyone know in WW2. Although VERY much has changed in terms of their sentiments and superiority complex since then, I would NOT be surprised if those feelings are still lingering around in the form of odd immigration policies.
It's funny how many of my fellow right-leaning americans (yes I can tell you are one by your post) discount everything they disagree with as Left Wing. As if your opinion is a wall, and anything outside of your wall is a land populated by undesirables and kooks.
Some of those tasks might best be done by a humanoid, since humans have done them adequately for so long. Really they mostly need hands and arms, but maybe not, and feet, but only because we've got steps, and probably something more like tank tracks which can deform on the roller axles to "walk" or something like it.
Having any or all of those tasks built into a single humanoid, or a team, is creepy. It's more a latent desire to enslave other humans than a desire to offload tasks to whatever just gets them done. Making them humanoid seems like a lot of extra work for just a fetish. So there's probably a market for AI "Real Doll" robots, but the stuff I don't want any part of doing should probably be a lot more abstract in form factor.
So you want to expensive restructure your house to accommodate a tracked robot just because you don't want to seem to have a humanoid fetish? My take is that a human home is designed around a humanoid form. Hence, it doesn't take a fetish to desire a humanoid robot that can operate in your home without requiring substantial changes to the home.
I kept waiting for it to do a backflip. I was disappoint.
which is totally what she said
I think the arrogance lies in thinking we'll start out replacing human tasks with a robot that is as versatile as a human. I just ran down all the automation we've already got, none of which is human in form, but all of which is the point from which incremental automation is on the verge of being robotic. The tasks I'm talking about doing with robots haven't been done for the several hundred million years of human evolution, and indeed mostly haven't been done, certainly not well, since humans stopped evolving as much as we instead change the environment to suit our genetics.
So the baby steps are giving the clothes dryer arms to fold shirts, which aren't going to look much like human arms to work right, not replicating a human body to do it as clumsily as humans do. Even though humans can also do other things adequately to survive to reproduce, a separate body in very different form to do those things is beyond the realm of human evolution - except that we've evolved to make robots which don't look like us.
--
make install -not war
Hmmm,... I guess Japan could try to invent intelligent robots to help their decrepit population, OR they could relax their racist immigration policies and allow immigrants in from Asia... I wonder which method has the best chance of working (actually I don't, it's fucking obvious to any non idiot)
Well, I don't think our immigration policies are particularly racist. We generally don't want immigrants regardless of their race or country of origin, period. Our strict immigration policies are necessary, IMO, to maintain our cultural identity and unique cultural values, and most of us like it that way.
If your country accepts immigrants from all over the world and take unfair advantage of their cheap labor under the hypocritical names of justice and freedom while they suffer tremendously from racism, that's fine with us. (I lived in the United States for 12 years and I know for a fact that racism against immigrants is rampant here.) But please, for Christ's sake, respect Japan's soverinty as an independent nation. You are being racist by calling us racist *just because* our values are different from yours.