Robots

[Pyrotex]

The age of robots has taken way too long to get here. Turns out the dynamical equations of perambulation ("walking") on arbitrary terrain are just sooooooo freakin' complicated. What you do getting out of your car and trotting into the corner drugstore is beyond what computer science can capture in 100,000 lines of code.

 

Well, maybe! Here are some links to the state-of-the-art [sOTA] robots of today!!!

 

Walking, trotting quadruped!

http://www.bdi.com/content/sec.php?section=BigDog

 

Wheelchair that travels on TWO wheels!

http://www.independencenow.com/ibot/balance.html

[i GOT to have me one of these!]

 

Anybody else know of any SOTA robots out there? Or even "pieces" like grasping hands, conformal feet (paws), terrain recog video, etc.????

[ughaibu]

Last summer there was a robot world cup (football/soccer). Hilarious but impressive nevertheless.

[ughaibu]

Search results: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=robo-cup+nagoya+2005&btnG=Google+Search

[InfiniteNow]

Wheelchair that travels on TWO wheels!

http://www.independencenow.com/ibot/balance.html

[i GOT to have me one of these!]

I saw this a few years back on Discovery channel. It was totally awesome, and allowed the user to get through super narrow passageways. I want one for crying out loud! :phones:

[Queso]

Yesterday I was driving my Toyota to Albertsons when I almost hit a confused robot malfunctioning in the road!

[Racoon]

Yesterday I was driving my Toyota to Albertsons when I almost hit a confused robot malfunctioning in the road!

 

We DO have something in common. Toyotas are great!

 

Do Go-Bots count as Robots?

Go-Bots - mighty vehicles - Go-Bots :ebaskbal: :hyper:

Poor Kids version of Transformers you young 'uns may not know...

 

Transformers Rule!

Megatron kicks mondo ***

Decepticons are my friends...

[Queso]

Hey I played with transformers the other day,

and then my friend drove off with the gas pump still in his car and ripped it out!

MUAAHAHAHAHA

[InfiniteNow]

Yesterday I was driving my Toyota to Albertsons when I almost hit a confused robot malfunctioning in the road!

Maybe it was a Roomba vacuum...

 

Roomba takes Frogger to the asphalt jungle

By Daniel Terdiman

Staff Writer, CNET News.com

 

AUSTIN, Texas--It's almost two in the morning and I'm standing in the middle of Austin's Sixth Street, hoping that I'm not going to get hit by a car.

On the other hand, I am hoping--as are 15 or so other people standing nearby--that one of the cars that keep rushing by will crush the tricked-out Roomba robot vacuum cleaner that Make Magazine associate editor Phillip Torrone and Eyebeam R&D fellow Limor Fried are sending back and forth across the street and through traffic.

This is Roomba Frogger, a modern, geek version of the famous 1981 video game "Frogger," in which players had to get a frog across a street without it getting crushed by a car or truck.

Copyright ©2006 CNET Networks, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[Pyrotex]

Maybe it was a Roomba vacuum...

Inf_Now,

I am forever in your debt. That was an awesome story, and I would never have known it if you hadn't posted it here. ROTFLMAO just isn't adequate.

Thanks!!!!!!!!

:eek_big: :evil: :evil: :eek:

[Qfwfq]

Maybe it was a Roomba vacuum...

You should know by now Infinite, not to make such a lengthy quote when a link would suffice. Especially when it is, or likely could be, copyright material.

[InfiniteNow]

You should know by now Infinite, not to make such a lengthy quote when a link would suffice. Especially when it is, or likely could be, copyright material

.

Thanks Q. I completely agree. Sometimes my brain isn't firing on all cylinders...

[Pyrotex]

I saw this a few years back on Discovery channel. It was totally awesome, and allowed the user to get through super narrow passageways. I want one for crying out loud! :D

Well, ladies and germs, it just may be that in a few months, I will be the owner of an Ibot-4000.

 

Last week, I test drove one!! You think it "looks" neat?? OMIGOD. It is beyond awesome. When that sucker popped up to "standing" mode (on two wheels) it felt as rock solid as sitting in Dad's recliner back home. There is no wiggle, no shimmy, no wobble, no uncertainty, no sense of imbalanced peril. And it does "pop" right up--with authority.

 

I drove it for over an hour. No, that is not accurate. I wore it. They were Seven League Boots, and in five minutes the control of the chair became totally transparent. It simply did whatever I thought of doing. I climbed stairs--no problem. I drove it off a curb, albeit slowly, and its gyro held it up long enough to reposition the wheels. The sonuvabich had everything but a fire-control system and GPS. (Those are optional!)

 

Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof! :eek2:

[InfiniteNow]

Last week, I test drove one!! You think it "looks" neat?? OMIGOD. It is beyond awesome.

Sweet. How does one go about lining something like that up? I presume it's a bit different that walking into the local Lexus dealership and them taking a copy of your liscense and insurance before handing you the keys...

 

 

I want to test drive a rocket pack... Do you have a contact for me down there in H-town? :eek2:

[Pyrotex]

Sweet. How does one go about lining something like that up? I presume it's a bit different that walking into the local Lexus dealership... I want to test drive a rocket pack...

Well, you have to NEED a new power chair (mine is 18 years old!), you have to visit a medical wheelchair clinic where they give you questionaires, take measurements, thump your knees, etc. Then you have to "qualify" for one, then they arrange for a factory rep to come to Houston and give you a test drive.

 

Sadly, NASA doesn't have but one rocket pack, and it works only in zero gee. If you tried to use it on the ground, it would just "pass gas". :eek2:

[InfiniteNow]

Sadly, NASA doesn't have but one rocket pack, and it works only in zero gee. If you tried to use it on the ground, it would just "pass gas". :eek2:

I always think of 2001:Space Odysee when I hear of those little air jets on the spacesuit. :D

 

 

How about one of these:

 

Personal Helicopter Pack

 

 

Big toys for big boys! :angry:

[Queso]

I want one..

[nkt]

The whole robot thing is amusing me greatly. When people say "Where are the robots?" it always makes me smile.

 

First, there was the simple tool. It was used by a man to allow him to do something a bit better, or much better, or even something impossible otherwise. Then came the addition of power, and so we had the first proto-robots - machines that allowed a man to "walk" 500 miles in a day without issue, or cut down a tree 100 times as fast. Next came the robots that took a small army of men to oversee, while they carried on doing work that was difficult, tricky, or impossible (the fun stuff) or too boring (the non-fun stuff). Soon, it came down to just one man and some computers running all the robots.

 

Next, that one man will be surplus. See the DARPA Grand Challenge II, or the NASA space exploration plan.

 

Walking robots are here. There are two approaches, both getting places fast. One is the Aiebo/Asimo/Robosapien type of walking, with a very rigid leg system and tonnes of processing power, and low efficiency. The other is the free hinged pendulum, seen in older toys for kids, which is far more fluid and efficient, but can't walk up stairs, etc. at all, even slowly. Within two years we will see robots that are a hybrid of the two, and we will rapidly see walking robots all over the place.

 

Within five years, we will see AI systems get more powerful, with the massive power of computer systems used to break all but the hardest of problems with "realtime" results. Already we see (but ignore) hundreds of things that the human mind and body is poorly adapted for, like the assistance of a calculator, or using a mobile phone to boost voice across miles, working in high radiation or high g environs, or on nanoscales. We tend to ignore these things because there is no "intelligence" behind it. Even Google, which picks the right stuff from about 8 billion pages, and tries to interpret conversions, locations, wants and needs from a few words sent in remotely, isn't considered "smart" yet. A human who could do such a thing 20 years ago would have been very, very sort after! 300 years ago, he would have been accused of witchcraft...

 

I think once we see the first robots doing human interface jobs, face to face, people will wake up and realise. Of course, most will say "It's not very good, is it?" and make the usual remarks that prove them stupid, when they couldn't draw a better face, let alone program the left eyebrow movements, and they will just carry on regardless, until they find no job for them in the call center, no job for them with a spade, no job designing things (if they are even qualified), not even fit to flip burgers next to the vendomaticbot...

 

What will happen then? Will there be a major backlash, with governments passing laws to fetter AI? It would be anti-competitive, but popular, on the back of promises to return jobs to people. Or will it find the government using these new tools as agents of oppression and power, where the new nanny state enforces its compassion to all with an iron robotic hand? Robot armies, as we already see doing flights of UAV armed with missiles, already have power of life and death over humans, so where will it end?

 

Now there is a topic for debate!