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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.
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.
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......
--
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.
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!
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
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
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'.
I was gonna write a little story about a future where most of your paycheck goes towards an android fund and after a few short years you retire and an android with your name and a DMV-type picture of your face gets your old job.
You spend the rest of your days living off its salary and loving life, doing all those things you wish you could do but are stuck at work. Oh course this isn't for everyone. Some people stay at their jobs for work they love, while there's people who have little to no interests and are bland boring specimins who deserve to work all day in an office full of robots like themselves.
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.