The latest version of Dexter walks faster and more robustly.(anybots.com)
anybots.com
The latest version of Dexter walks faster and more robustly.
http://anybots.com/videos.html#walking_080302_title
4 comments
I think you answered your own question: "Isaac Asimov said that humanoid robots will have an advantage because the whole world is already build for humans."
Given the choice, do you really think we would rebuild the whole world's infrastructure?
Given the choice, do you really think we would rebuild the whole world's infrastructure?
"Given the choice, do you really think we would rebuild the whole world's infrastructure?"
No - because we already have built the infrastructure in such a way that most important places can be reached with wheels rather than legs.
And if I had the choice of
1. maybe buying a small ramp for the stairs in my (not yet existing) house so that a wheeled robot can drive upstairs
2. buying a humanoid robot that can use the stairs himself
I would of course consider the costs - my guess is that the ramp will be much cheaper. What would you do?
No - because we already have built the infrastructure in such a way that most important places can be reached with wheels rather than legs.
And if I had the choice of
1. maybe buying a small ramp for the stairs in my (not yet existing) house so that a wheeled robot can drive upstairs
2. buying a humanoid robot that can use the stairs himself
I would of course consider the costs - my guess is that the ramp will be much cheaper. What would you do?
Segways can handle most terrain humans encounter daily. Anybot is also working on a wheeled robot, Monty.
Then again, Dean Kamen said cities would be redesigned for Segways...
Then again, Dean Kamen said cities would be redesigned for Segways...
hey, two leg will be able to play soccer nevertheless!
As Trevor was kicking his legs and pushing on his knees, I was waiting for Dexter to turn around and slap him silly. Guess I've been reading too much SciFi.
Just wondering: Do the people in robotics realize that the real money is in getting machines to pick cabbages and the like? These sorts of inventions (like any others) really need to replace labor to be economic.
Picking cabbages is a pretty hard problem. I'm pretty sure they realize the economic potential, but Dexter took his first baby steps not too long ago.
"Do note that the "total" time spent (e.g., time spent in Ruby, instead of waiting on IO) is much lower for Sphinx than for Solr. For both of them, the socket overhead is a constant penalty, and won't increase."
Hey, why not write a pure Ruby indexing and search engine?
Oh right, because Ruby is too slow.
Hey, why not write a pure Ruby indexing and search engine?
Oh right, because Ruby is too slow.
Wrong article, perhaps?
The usual arguments for legged robots aren't very convincing, IMO:
- "legged robots are better for difficult/uneven terrain": look at some videos showing the iRobot PackBot (which runs on threads): Although it's very small, it can climb stairs.
- "humanoid robots have an advantage because people can interact more naturally with them": maybe, but people also interact with Roombas, dogs, cars etc. - none of which are humanoid. Regarding the Roomba, I have read an article that many people name their Roomba and even pity them if it gets stuck. So the question will be: is the advantage of "better interaction" worth the considerably higher price for a humanoid robot body?
- Isaac Asimov said that humanoid robots will have an advantage because the whole world is already build for humans. Again, maybe - but when the car was introduced, we rebuilt the whole infrastructure (i.e. streets) to meet our new machines' needs.
Perhaps I'm just not getting the point of humanoid robots - apart from beeing technically impressive and cool to watch.