Technabob » robovie

Robovie-PC Wins First Robot Marathon (At a Very Slow Pace)

Range — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 13:05:38 +0000

Ah, marathons. It seems that robots are now taking up the task of running them for us. The winner of the first robot marathon is a small robot called Robovie-PC.

Yep, it was a real marathon, not a mini-marathon, and definitely not this. There were five robots running a 330-foot track for the Vstone Robot Marathon [JP]. They had to run this over 400 times to complete a full marathon. The race was a full 26.2 miles long, but the guys over at PlasticPals point out that in robot scale (1/4.5 scale), they would have actually run closer to 118 miles in human scale.

The mini humanoid Robovie-PC stands about 16 inches tall and weighs 53 pounds. It has a total of 20 joints. Robovie-PC beat his closest opponent by just a second. It took him 55 hours to complete the marathon. His average speed was less than 0.5 mph. I guess there’s not danger of robots winning any real marathons soon.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

[via Yahoo!News [JP] via PlasticPals]

Robovie Mr2 Combines Robot and iPod Touch

Range — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 17:40:21 +0000

It’s kind of fitting that there is now a robot that will combine robotics with the iPod Touch. If you think about it, it actually makes sense. People have their iPods with them almost everywhere, and it’s a perfect device to have as the heart of a robot since it can access WiFi networks and the Internet.

The just-unveiled Robovie mR2, robot comes courtesy of Japan’s Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute. The cute desktop ‘bot stands just about 1 foot tall and weighs 4.4 pounds.

The robot can be controlled via the iPod when it’s in the chest cavity or via WiFi or Bluetooth, and Robovie mR2 can find its way around using an array of built-in sensors and microphones. You can see it in action here.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Maybe it should have an iPhone in its belly instead of an iPod Touch, so it could make calls for you too.

[via Crunchgear]

Robovie-Ii: the Grocery Shopping Robot From Japan

Range — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:45:57 +0000

Robovie-II is the latest robot coming out of Japan. It helps you do your grocery shopping. This is perfect if you have a lot of groceries to lug around, if you are older, or disabled. Plus, it’s just so cool!

What actually surprises me even more is that it’s currently being tested in Kyoto, Japan. It’s part of a wave of new technology helping you do your groceries. It’s part of a form of retail assistance, that uses a network of sensors and wireless devices.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

It’s shown here helping the elderly in doing their grocery rounds. It’s part of a whole process, which starts at home. The user enters their shopping list into a special mobile device. When the shopper arrives at the store, the robot will sense this device and greet the shopper. Then, the robot will help the shopper around the store, carrying the grocery load, and reminding the user of any items that were forgotten. It can also recommend further items. For now, it’s in testing in the Apita-Seikadai supermarket in Kyoto, Japan, until next March.

[via PopSci]

Robot Can Understand Several People Talking at Once

Technabob — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 03:48:27 +0000

Here’s a pretty impressive demonstration of a complex new speech recognition technology. The robot in this video clip is able to listen to three people speaking at the same exact moment, understand exactly what they each said, then process the data dynamically.

Be sure to have your speakers turned on for this video clip or you’ll miss how it works.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The Robot Audition Project is a collaborative effort by Kyoto University and Honda Research Institute Japan. The team has been working on developing these complex voice processing capabilities for several years now, but it’s only recently that they’ve got the system working so well. The application can not only recognize voices in real time, it can determine where they’re coming from using both auditory and visual cues, including face recognition technology.

The engineers who’ve designed the system have honed it enough now that they’ve even got it running on several different robotic platforms, including the Robovie R2 (seen in the video) and the well-known Honda Asimo.

Perhaps once they get these robots working in the real world, they’ll finally get my order right at the Burger King.