Sony Corp.'s humanoid robot Qrio throws a ball at an unveiling in Tokyo, Dec. 18, 2003, in this combination photo. (Toshiyuki Aizawa/Reuters)
Posted on 12/18/2003 9:13:04 AM PST by presidio9
He may not be able to give you a run for your money but one quick step for Sony Corp.'s Qrio humanoid robot is one big step for robots in general.
Electronics and entertainment giant Sony said on Thursday that it had developed the world's first running -- okay, jogging -- robot.
"All around the world, universities and think tanks have been researching how to make robots run but we are pleased to announce that we have done it first," Toshi Doi, an executive vice president at Sony told a news conference.
The sleek and diminutive Qrio, which until recently had been known as Sony's SDR robot entertaining crowds with fluid and funky dance motions, can now trot at a speed of 15 yards per minute.
If 23-inch, 15-pound Qrio were average human-size, that would translate into 1.5 miles an hour.
The big technological breakthrough, says Sony, was in getting both the robot's feet to lose contact with the ground at once. Up until now humanoid or two-legged robots have needed to have one foot on the floor to move stably.
"The hardest part was theoretical. Humanoid robots like Sony's older Qrios and Honda's Asimo have been based on a theory which dictates that there must be contact with the floor. We had to develop a new theory," said Doi.
Other enhancements for the latest version of Qrio include more advanced finger control that allows him, swiveling like a baseball pitcher, to throw a light ball some three to four yards, and hold fans while dancing.
Sony's robot developers admit however that Qrio's running prowess has some way to go.
Its running distance is still short and it is not yet ready to join older models that entertain at Sony's promotional events because the technology that allows those models to get up when they fall needs to be enhanced for the new Qrio.
The next challenge, said Doi, is to make Qrio's running motion less jogging-like and more like an athlete's.
At the moment, Qrio's time with both feet off the ground is only 40 milliseconds, compared with around one second managed by athletes, he said.
Sony, which also makes the Aibo (news - web sites) robot dog, a sell-out success when it debuted in 1999, said it still doesn't have a timetable for commercializing Qrio, whose name is short for "quest for curiosity."
And Doi admits a running Qrio is not necessarily a helpful product.
"It's not useful. Sony doesn't make useful robots. Sony makes robots that entertain," he said.
Just damn.
If you want on the new list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...
What? It's already been unveiled, and the Dems ran it for president in 2000.
This is an upgrade. It has personality.
Today: a cute little blue ball.
Tommorow: a not so cute grenade?
Well, the Democrats are desperate for someone halfway decent to run next year...
When we were taking AIBO on his first promotional tour (I work for Sony of Canada) his "master" brought him into our cafeteria at lumch time. Most folks hadn't seen him before and a crowd gathered around the little cart they were wheeling him around on. A bunch of people were all trying to pet him at once and he started to shake and back off from the mob. He then locked up and we couldn't restart him. He actually looked to be shaking and cowering to get away from everyone. It was really wierd.
Our techs (that had admittedly little training on the thing) couldn't get it working no matter what they tried. We contacted Tokyo to try and find a solution but they said they'd never seen an AIBO exhibit that behavior before (the shaking) and requested we send the unit back for their examination.
A couple of weeks later we heard from engineers at the design lab. Their answer: We scared it. Seriously. The overstimulation caused by interaction with so many people in a near frenzied environment overwhelmed the operating system's ability to control the dog's responses, and since it had never been around a crowd like that before it didn't know how to react. The programming in it couldn't process the robot's "emotions" and as they described it, he had a "heart attack."
They claimed it was the first time they'd ever encountered that reaction. They openly admitted that while they did know most of what the robot could do there were constantly responses and behaviors being discovered that they had no idea it could exhibit.
I could tell you stories of other amazing things that happen at the lab where these things are designed but that would be telling stories too far out of school ;-)
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