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Aibo Gets Competition: NEC's R100
gupg writes "NEC has a new personal robot in "incubation"; the FAQ says that it's a prototype developed in their research labs. The web page is really amateurish and the robot doesn't look too aesthetically pleasing, but it seems to be much smarter than the AIBO. Looks like they are trying to add a court jester to your house who will switch TV channels, check email and do small-talk with you. Only problem is that the battery lasts for about 1.5-2 hours and recharging takes 2-3 hours. " Believe me, after sharing an office with Rob's Aibo, there's a lot of ground to cover before we've got digital pets.
Well, if nothing else, this should persuade the Aibo-peeps that they need to keep working to keep up with the competition :)
Chris.
It doesn't look _that_ nice, but it has some nice options i didn't find in the aibo.. :) :)
i.e. you can make it do stuff for you, let it change channels and fetch mail and stuff - i think i like it better because it's more of a 'digital servant' kind of thing
Let's hope this is the first step towards a robot that _really_ can do what you tell it to
Because "Weebles wobble but they don't fall down"
If you're not going to fund the appearance group, I think the design is elegantly simple.
I take it I won't be allowed to take in the pentagon due to its wander-around and record people features...
"Fluffy, get the paper. Fluffy, go get another job, I need another Palm XXVII..."
But seriously, o/t for a sec, has any thought been put into if/how society will work if we ever automate most tasks with robots? What will people do? How will governments provide for everyone? Or will they? I know it's a long way off, but still...
P
Does that look like a distant relative of our favorit robot? Maybe after a few revisions R100 might as well become the adam of R2D2.
Now some interesting things you can do to with R100..
Train it to recoginze your pets.. dogs and cats.. Rover and Tom (ok forget the cat)
Now program R100 to control the doggy. Have fixed times for doggy to eat, take a dump, roll over and play dead, play ball and so on.
Oh R200 comes with weather proof industrial quality tires and is certified as the first robot driver. So it can take your dog for a walk (And scoop up the poop afterwards).
speculations are endless......
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I can just see my girlfriend coming home and the R100 going: "Hi, how about you and me having some fun together?"
It's shaped a little too much like a football,
I'm afraid I couldn't resist the urge to punt the
thing the first time it bluescreened.
On the battery life issue, I saw a small battery-powered 'robot vacuum cleaner' on the BBC's Tomorrow's World a couple of years ago, which learnt the topology of the room, but most importantly, the location of the power sockets. When it's ''low power'' light came on, it went directly to the power socket and recharged itself. That seemed to me to be the single most important breakthrough in robotics for the last few decades :)
Now they just need to get it to have a second battery on charge and just swap them when its battery gets low and battery capacity will cease to matter much.
Just forgot to add this
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They should make it work like R2-D2: when the batteries are low, it just walks over, sticks it's... uh... universal utility device in the wall mounted charging unit, and charges up. Oh my, I just had visions of a new definition of cybersex...
i noticed that one of the proposed color schemes
is penguin-like.we who are interested should
write them and show an interest in this scheme
being put into production as well as linux versions of the software.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
No, I'm not going to ask if there will be Linux support.
:)
This robot is a networked device which is a feature I don't recall the AIBO having. Put this together with X10 devices and you could dominate the world by voice! (Or at least the part you live in.)
I imagine the penguinish color theme will be my choice if there is . . . enough money in my bank account! (See? I didn't ask about Linux support
So, AIBO's not the wonderdog, eh? I should have figured.
Oh, how I remember growing up, being about as close to Mini-Geek as humanly possible, and drooling over...Teddy Ruxpin.
For those lucky enough to have been spared the technological disappointment I was forced to experience, little Teddy was a bear with a motor in his mouth...and I swear to you, this bear could TALK! Oh, my poor little Coco 2, with its EARS system, had voice synthesis that sounded so machine like(and yet, here I am 15 years later, and things aren't all that much better)...
But Teddy was almost...human! Wow! And it responded to the lucky kids that got to play with it!
Of course, Teddy *was* human--just a tape recorder in the back, with the mouth playing the role as VU meter. It wasn't responsive. It had no voice recognition. It was just a dumb bear.
There's true genius in the small number of AIBOs being built. Put out a million AIBOs, and everyone discovers it's nowhere near as magical as we'd like to think. Put out 2500, and most of us remain deluded by the myth.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
robotic pet dogs
do not leave metal poopies
no annoying mess
There is this big rush to get a 'robotic human' out in Japan. The Japaneese government is encouraging companies to produce personal, robotic helpers that could almost be considered human. This is just the start of things.
TV told me, so it must be true.
With a bit of black paint and some very minor modifications, that thing could REALLY look like a little penguin. :>
Well, the first thing that strikes would be the "personability" of the thing... and of course as a geek what's the first thing you want to know? how it works, of course.
i dea02a.htm
:)
:)
the site is rather devoid of real technical data (onboard processor and storage? how does it interface with the "offboard" pc? what sort of stuff does that pc do?)
really, this looks unfortunately little more than a very expensive teddy ruxpin shaped in a pokemon style. the few technical specifications there are imply it can only recognize 100 phrases (most, if not all of which, i bet, are preprogrammed, such as turn the tv channel, fetch the remote, read me my email etc) in other words, its functionality is predetermined, with little to no capability for expansion (its 300 output phrases must be similarly preprogrammed)
ah well, so it's going to be eye candy. so at least, is it going to look good? check out:
http://www.incx.nec.co.jp/robot/english/idea-e/
the shimizu one looks based on the imac, and the ultraman and uri-chan ones are cool. you could always buy a "feature expansion pack" (aka a box of crayons) i suppose
what intrigues me is its reported "data transfer" capability... one would assume the pc does most of the work and simply transmits it to the bot (as in the emails, for instance), however, what really grabbed my attention was it's supposed ability to display video for you - is it going to have some high-speed wireless connection, and a box attached to the scart input on the tv that receives its input? that would rock. but would also explain why its battery life is pitiful.
in the end, i think, this is pandering towards the "AI" perceptions of the masses, who can still be amazed by a 'echo "who are you?"; read $idiot; echo "hi, " + $idiot;', turning its head to "listen" to people, and so forth. the idea of offloading the computation onto a remote box is brilliant, and should be the way forward, imho, but i think these manufacturers have to get their priorities right.
to that end, someone has to come up with a cool robot with some proper semantic responses, learning capabilities and usefulness, then show the public it can be done. any takers?
Fross
Techno-trousers, ex-NASA. Perfect for walkies!
It's cunning the way the thing doesn't have eyes.
You have to connect it to your computer.
But your computer is connected to the internet. Now the little guy, searching for new ideas for you, tranfers it's intelligence to some military supercomputer. Then he's got tanks planes, and nukes under his control(to find new ideas for you). Next thing we know, some advanced cyborg transports back in time to 1984 to kill the unbeatable leader "john"'s mother. The cyborg fails, and gets killed, but his arm remains and helps humans create the abio, and r100 which lead to our eventual downfall.
This was on Tomorrow's World (a long running BBC 1 technology program in the UK) last week. The feature list sounded pretty impressive, it could do things like record a video message for a specific person, and when it later saw that person (optical pattern recognition), it would take them to the TV and replay the message on it. It had a really annoying squeaky voice and kept interrupting people though; I suspect it would get annoying quickly if there wasn't any way to tell it to shut up.
These things look really cool, but did you happen to look at the color scheme ideas page? There looks to be some very cool designs, even a penguin! What I wouldnt give to have a kickass penguin wandering around my house aimlessly.
- clowns are evil
They've Borged Kenny!
That calls for a Vibration mode
Sorry had to...
-Kris
The poster wrote something aobut how amatuerish the web page is and how unpleasant looking the lil' critter is.
Lay off the drugs or at least start sharing them. This is one of the nicer webpages I've come across in a while. Wonderful use of nicely drawn comic strips, very soft colors which are easy to look at, and simple text. Its seems pointed towards children though with its simplicity, which makes you wonder who the target demographic really is.
As far as the robot goes, yeah its ugly until someone paints him black and attaches a beak and flippers to it and calls it Tux. Then slashdotters will come a runnin'.
Why not just buy a REAL dog or cat? There are tons of them out there and they are cheap! I'd much rather cuddle up with a furry cat or dog than a cold metal robot thing that doesn't even look real.
Is it just me, is my pattern matching algorithm cranked too high, or does this really look like Kenny from SouthPark?
That thing looks like Mr. Potato Head! There's noway that's competition to Sony'S Aibo.
Does anyone else think the version shown on their opening page looks like Kenny from South Park?
Real pets work better. Post it notes are still more effective than a robot that stores video messages. Why don't you all go get laid or something, you need a new experience.
HAHAHAHA, this was the most funny thing i've read :)
... that does nothing except moves around on it's own.
a beowulf of these things! They could take over the world!
It's actually rather nice. The design is reasonably attractive and somewhat creative. The HTML seems to have been written by someone with a clue about HTML, for once. No FrontPage nonsense, and they include the proper DOCTYPE declaration and all the right closing tags, etc.
Unfortunately, it didn't validate as correct HTML, but that's the norm rather than the exception.
From the section titled "How does it work?" It can tell if you are being gentle or forceful and respond accordingly. I guess it can retaliate. Like something right out of Poltergeist.
Time flies like an arrow;
Time flies like an arrow;
Fruit flies like a bananna
I think NEC's really onto something here. I mean, sure the AIBO was a big step, but it wasn't as "in touch" with the person as this R100 seems. I think the design is brilliant, a great stoke of marketing genius ^_^
But I also think (man I'm thinking a lot today ^_^) that it will need to be destroyed, if these things become too commonplace.
-They'll do everything for you. We'll all start to become lazy, constantly relying on this thing to clean our rooms, check our e-mails, even possibly walk the dog...as it is American's are saddeningly overweight (the majority), this wouldn't help matters much, just make them worse.
-Their AI personalities sound extremely nauseating! Always so chipper, so friendly, so welcoming and so eager to please...after about a few hours of ownership I'd probably scream for mercy and punt it into the street. It could probably be programed to be different, but as things stand it doesn't sound that way...ahh! Reminds me of the AI computer in the Heart of Gold, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ^_^
And if my memory serves me, Teddy Ruxpin scared the crap out of me ^_^ One stuffed bear, having that much power and human characteristics...eek. The R100 is nothing like that.
But rather, a penguin waddling around the house...that sounds cute ^_^
miyax
Get R100 as well. Nice stuffs that would happen:
1. They'll duke it out
2. They'll recognize each other and become friends
3. They'll do #2 and then conspire against you
The possibilities are endless...use your imagination here...
And the interface will, of course, be proprietary, but it will allow you to write your own routines for what this thing acts like. Screw walking the dog, I want naughty pix of my cute neighbor, and I want to put a cherry bomb in a cops muffler, and I want to buy a case of beer from the corner store without getting my ass out of my computer chair. And I want enough cargo space for the self destruct device i plan to install in the f***er
8-)
I got to borrow a HERO robot(the scaled down model without the cool arm), and the most it did with my experiences is walk around a bit, get stuck and yell "help!" until I turned it around.
That thing was boxy, and not very pleasing. This R100 looks like a cybernetic weeble.
the designers of the Aibo and the R100 are anything like me they'd program in special commands that would make the robot do silly stuff like kill the neighbors or spit acid. Who would want a non-lethal robot? They have the sensors, all they need now are the weaponry.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
... While your at it? -Darren
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"You spilled my egg... I needed that egg."
Would it not be cool to add the new features from the R100 to the AiBO? (Sorry but i think the AiBO is cuter and i don't want no pesky 'bot telling me i have been K-lined for flooding)
The MyTh - I am a figment of the Imagination - [Im Probably even not here]
I guess you watched that movie last night, huh? :-)
with a built in EMP gun?
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
These robotic pets are so cool. I'd like to see them make something other than just dogs though. All these robotic dogs are similar to Battlestar Gallactica's Boxy(?). Maybe a robotic mouse (hehe) could be programmed to do something actually useful such as getting rid of insects in the house or integrated into a security/monitor system that could monitor any movement anywhere in the house.
I have to say, the Japanese have us beat when it comes to frivolous technology. I would give it another 2-3 years(same timespan I'll give for palmtop technology) before I'll buy something like that, but I think they would be great to have. Problem is, I have carpet - can they deal with that? Or are they going to wake me up in the middle of the night.....(bo bo bee bo ba...aaaaah! Mama-mama-mama! Okirikunakatta!)?
-lx
Three things about the R100 implimentation that I found provocotive... 1.) It is basically an untethered computer peripheral device. It is a self propelled enclosure that contains input sensors (video, sound, temperature), output devices (motors, speaker, lights), and a wireless network interface. It can be manufactured relatively inexpensively. 2.) It is a networked device. It's AI intelligence resides not in the robot, but rather on a stationary PC, and ultimately on the whole Internet. The R-100 is merely a puppet. The beauty of this is that the AI can grow with all the synergism provided by the Internet. As PC's and software develop, the AI will improve exponentially. Data from the robot's simple sensors can be processed in real time by multiple programs from different companies on multiple computers spread around the planet. The output from these programs will allow a simple puppet to be transformed into an apparently complex sentient being. 3.) The AI will eventually turn into 'The Matrix', and Keannau Reeves will save us.