The Korean start-up Kortech has just announced its Rogun, a humanoid, 1-meter tall robot with advanced skills.
“Rogun is capable of guarding homes around the clock; the camera-eyed robot will give a warning to its owner via cell phone when strangers visit an empty house”, Korntech CEO Lee Dong-hwan said.
Right now, the machine would cost a whopping $100,000, but the company expects that its price could drop to $5,000 in “a near future”.
(Via Engadget)
Don’t miss these images of FT, Tomotaka Takahashi’s latest creation. The small humanoid robot was “specially designed to express a lean, feminine body line” and the result is just great (check the videos here and here). Robots on a catwalk? Yeah.
Thanks to Jean-Michel Billaut, you can watch a short - but nice - clip showing Nao in action. Nao, built by French start-up Aldebaran Robotics, will try to compete with advanced domestic humanoid robots from Asia. The Linux-based, Wi-Fi equipped robot will walk, dance, understand voice commands, recognize faces and it will be “teachable by the user”.
I interviewed Bruno Maisonnier, Aldebaran’s CEO, last year, and I’m really happy to see that the project is doing well. Interestingly, he confirms in the video that:
“Limited versions of Nao will be on sale at the end of 2007, with a full commercial launch by early 2008; the expected retail price will be in the EUR2,500-3,000 range.”
This news release from MIT gives details on Domo, an advanced humanoid robot research project. “A robot that can function in a real human environment”, Domo is “an assistive robot which adapts itself to people and new places”.
Many applications are envisioned:
“A robot like Domo could help elderly or wheelchair-bound people with simple household tasks like putting away dishes. Other potential applications include agriculture, space travel and assisting workers on an assembly line, says Aaron Edsinger, an MIT postdoctoral associate who has been working on Domo for the last three years.”
Following researches conducted for years at MIT (namely on Kismet and Cog), Domo has 29 degrees of freedom and incoportaes dozens of sensors that “make it able to sense when a human is touching it”. Additional details and pictures can be found here.
Image: © MIT
Very good reading on News.com today: “Baby steps for Dexter the robot“. Its a long piece, mostlty focused on Dexter, a human-sized robot being built by US-based start-up Anybots. The young company is quite ambitious:
“Anybots wants its creations to be all-purpose, not specialized à la Roomba. The goal is nothing less than to create a robot that can be taught to do all the things humans can do.”
The whole article is worth reading and gives a good view on the state of advancement in the humanoid robots fields. Reading this article, one gets the feelling that the US have eventually decided to catch up with Japan in the humanoid race.
Speaking of Japan, there is an interesting interview of Stephen Keeney, North American Asimo project leader at Honda, on Tech Digest. Nothing really new here, but it’s a good summary of the goals (and achieved steps) of the Asimo project, which remains one of the most advanced large size humanoid robot in the world. This quote from Keeney is quite noticeable:
“Asimo is a new technology that will continue to evolve, but we hope in about 10 years we’ll start to see versions working in homes or hospitals. I just hope by the time I retire, I’ll be able to have an Asimo!”
Wow. 10 years!
Absolute Gadget reports that “Plen” is now available, for about $2,400 (it’s a limited edition, though).
Plen is a small and cute robot created by japanese maker Akazawa. Dubbed “Desktop Hobby Robot”, it’s a 700g, 23cm tall, Bluetooth-equipped robot with 18 degrees of freedom. It walks on two legs and is able to perform different complex movements, including roller-skating. A humanoid robot able to do roller-skating on its own… how cool is that?
Image: © Akazawa
