December 19, 2003
Sony's Dancing Machine
Sony has been doing some amazing things with their Qrio humanoid robot, including dancing and pitching a baseball. I have no idea about how many man-hours they are putting into this, but this is very very impressive.
In the latest demonstration, the bubble-headed, glowing-eyed robot jiggled and made mechanical jangling sounds as it moved forward on a table, bounced jerkily sideways and pivoted in a turn. It started with a slow walk, moved into an easy jog, stopped, then turned and begin jogging again.
While running robots are not altogether new, Sony engineers said their robot was a technical achievement because it smoothly simulated running. The breakthrough required sophisticated features in the robot's joints and a beefy central processing unit to keep Qrio's balance and manage delicate maneuvers.
Here is the amazing video of the performance.
Update: here is another video of the dancing via Cyrus Bazeghi of the UCSC Computer Engineering Department.
Posted by elkaim at December 19, 2003 11:39 AM