Build a Robot out of a Car?

SomeRobotGuy writes "A researcher in the U.K. is in the process of building an autonomous biped robot out of a Mini Cooper r50. Its functions are controlled by six computers running RTLinux and it's powered by an internal combustion engine. And the thing's not tiny, at over 10 feet tall! The site includes videos showing some impressive results."

Standard Bending Unit?

Now it just needs a loudspeaker and a recording of "BITE MY SHINY METAL ASS!"

Re:Standard Bending Unit?

You know, after all these years you'd think slashdot would have tried to come up with something that wouldn't cripple the web sites they link to, and cost poor unsuspecting people hugely increased bandwidth fees. For a website that always tries to position itself as siding with the independent, pre-commercial spirit of the internet, the Slashdot editors have a really lousy sense of ethics.

Re:Standard Bending Unit?

You know, after all these years you'd think slashdot would have tried to come up with something that wouldn't cripple the web sites they link to, and cost poor unsuspecting people hugely increased bandwidth fees. For a website that always tries to position itself as siding with the independent, pre-commercial spirit of the internet, the Slashdot editors have a really lousy sense of ethics.

Right on!

What makes it even worse is that they have a busines model around fukcing over unsuspecting people. You pay them to see the site before it gets completely crippled (I notice that some times people take down movies and won't put them back up after a slashdotting). Now if it wasn't for the slashdot effect, would so many people pay for slashdot accounts?

Mirror

Another poster has put up a mirror [slashdot.org], though nobody seems to have noticed the original comment.

The mirror is available here [69.55.225.122].

The page doesn't load animations properly in Opera, and relies upon Quicktime to display the Mpegs. It might work in Mozilla, but it might not.

And again, adulations aplenty to xWh3lPx for the mirror.

Huh?

They could have picked any transformer and they pick BUMBLEBEE?

Re:Huh?

Transformer Refuses To Change Back Into Volkswagen

CYBERTRON -- Following an intense battle with Megatron and his evil Decepticons Monday, former robot-in-disguise Bumblebee refused to revert to his natural state as a yellow Volkswagen Beetle. "I hid my existence in this world by taking the form of a vehicle! I revealed my true nature when I was called upon to protect earth!" said Bumblebee, a member of Optimus Prime's heroic Autobots force. "I refuse to change back into a humiliating bubble-shaped compact car!" Bumblebee added that Megatron arrived on earth with one goal: Destruction!

(from The Onion [theonion.com])

Re:More than meets the eye...

Actually he's Bumblebee's British cousin, Nigel. (He visited Cybertron during the short-lived Transformers sitcom.)

Next up

They should use a red tractor trailer to build Optimus Prime.

wow

The things you can do with photoshop...

Bubblegum Crisis

Holy crap! It's a Motoslave [caltech.edu]!

I just love photoshop...

... and After Effects.

Re:I just love photoshop...

Well, to avoid a robot-car gap, I have to turned to my driveway to see what I can do. Mini Cooper r50, prepare to meet '82 Dodge Colt RS! And mine has a sun-roof...

we meet at dawn.

It's a nice bit of CG, it might be from MINI

The site is well camouflaged to make it seem real. The CG work is well done. It wouldn't suprise me if this is a site created by MINI. They have a long history of non-traditional advertising. They have put a MINI in the stands at a Giants Baseball game. They put them into Malls on a platform with coin slots saying $16,995 in quaters for a ride.
There best known one was putting the MINI on the roof of a Chevy Suburban and driving it arround San Francisco.

It was also recently revealed that the Weekly World News article with BatBoy Stealing a MINI was a planted article by MINI USA.

Re:It's a nice bit of CG, it might be from MINI

It seems that it is advertising.

A whois lookup on r50rd.co.uk returns the address:

6 darblay street
london
W1V 8DM
GB

A quick search for this address on Google reveals:

Martyn Gould Productions, 6 D'Arblay St, London, W1F 8DN, UK

On a page titled: "Film and Television - Post Production, Commercials"

Re:And the final proof

Mini [mini.co.uk] are about to introduce the Mini Convertible so can you guess what the ad campaign is going to be?

Free advertising here on Slashdot.

Cheers
VikingBrad

Poor publicity...

For something claiming to be "the fastest Web server ever" [zeus.com]. It certainly doesn't seem to be standing up to a slashdotting very well.

Re:Poor publicity...

For something claiming to be "the fastest Web server ever" [zeus.com]. It certainly doesn't seem to be standing up to a slashdotting very well.

Of course they are the fastest. They ran away.

Re:Poor publicity...

Oh, I don't know... it went down pretty fast.

Yeah.

Note to self: If I ever make a web server, don't put advertisements for it on "Error 503: Server Broke" page.

Geez.

That's great. Link to a small site with a bunch of medium mpeg files. Give them no warning. Has slashdot no shame???

Seems like it's become a custom around here to destroy small hobbyist sites. *sigh*

From what I got to see of it, it is truly awesome! The amount of work this guy has put into this project is just amazing. Makes me realize even more how much I want to get into the field of robotics.

Re:Geez.

Seems like it's become a custom around here to destroy small hobbyist sites.

I wonder if perhaps that's a sign that the small hobbyist sites are the only ones doing "cool" stuff anymore.

OT:Geez.

That's great. Link to a small site with a bunch of medium mpeg files. Give them no warning. Has slashdot no shame??? Seems like it's become a custom around here to destroy small hobbyist sites. *sigh*

I agree that this might inconvenience many small sites, and in the case of those who (for whatever awful reason) have bandwidth overage charges instead of an auto-cutoff it might even put them in the poor house. However the current /. system works pretty well, especially when a subscriber takes it upon themselves (throwing caution and probably several legalities to the wind) to mirror the content or Google caches the site so we can at least read the text. And for quite some time on the Internet the reality is that any site, on any subject, anywhere geographically, can be /.'ed by MANY different news/aggregator sites if they link to it. And with the high content value on small sites that concentrate on a single subject (esp if it's the original author/design team/etc's site) there is a much higher probablility that it will be selected to be /.'ed by the world at large. Of course hardly anyone at these small sites actually considers that they might get blasted by a "friendly DDOS", and even the ones who think/pray for the attention of a giant like /. probably don't go the extra bit and make sure their sites can either withstand it or fail gracefully (without the aforementioned bandwidth overage charges). Seems to me some of these "build a basic website" primers need to add a section on ALL the various things that can happen to even hobby websites; not only /.'ing but also defacement, etc.

Of course I agree it's a problem, just giving my thoughts on the situation...

Jonah Hex

HOLA!

Now THAT is a toy!!

I'll take a dozen!

They should have run the

server on the cooper engine.
MORE HORSEPOWER!!

And the winner is....

I would hate to be the other robot when this thing makes it to battle bots.

Site is Farked...

...er, I mean /.-ed...

Decepticon Millennium Copyright Act

Clearly, this is an unacceptable use of an automobile.

Strange things indeed..

This thing looks like a cross between a Gundam and Robocop. I think that Jesse James should have built this on Monster Garage. OK. Now what does it REALLY do?

FAKE!

Watch the "Battery Test" video, if that isn't CGI then I'm a monkey's uncle.

Re:FAKE!

You're right, it's a dead giveaway. Notice the guy holding the clipboard, the lighting is camera left since the clipboard casts a shadow on his chest. But the fake CG shadows from the "robot" indicate the model was lit from the camera upper right. And none of the background objects (i.e. the cart) casts shadows anywhere near as distinct as the "robot."
Come on fakers, don't you know that your lighting has to be consistent between composited layers?

Next Project

Take an F-15 and turn it into Starscream.

Or, optionally, find a thirty-foot-long alien ray gun and turn it into Shockwave.

Don't forget Unicron! [imdb.com]

It's Not Real

There is nothing but fluff on that site. The "sketches" have the stink of marketing all over them. Now, whenever I see a Mini Cooper, I'll be reminded of their pathetic "me too" attempt to get some attention. At least Honda's Cog ad actually entailed some technological brilliance and real work to make happen. All this does is raise the question of where the line should be drawn when it comes to making false claims of research and development in order to get free advertising. Isn't that illegal? What's the difference between what Mini is doing and what we'd think of a drug company that fabricated a bunch of bogus "technology" to imply that it had a cure for cancer for the purpose of getting free advertising?

Yeah, I guess I don't like the feeling of being duped by a marketing department.

Red Green

Red Green already did this with a K-Car. And a few rolls of duct tape.

I liked it better

when they called it KITT. All they need now is a couple of LEDs on the front of the car and William Daniels in the trunk.

This would be cooler if...

...it were real. This is basically a less cool version of the VW bug transformer video, which can be found here [wozzers.co.uk] (sorry about the format). The creator of the video has an interview here [botcollector.com], though the original site is down.

I'm surprised this slipped through, editors.

Updated version

Actually, the personal website of the author [themichaelsmith.com] has a cleaned up, and significantly larger, version available here [comcast.net].

Reply From Builder (Colin Mayhew)

I just came across a reply from the creator regarding its authenicty [google.com] on Google Groups:

From: Chris S. ([e-mail])
Subject: Re: Robot built from a Mini Cooper?
View: Complete Thread (9 articles)
Original Format
Newsgroups: comp.robotics.misc
Date: 2004-03-11 13:08:35 PST

I'm not so sure. I really want to believe this thing's for real, but I
have some serious doubts. Here's the response I got from Colin Mayhew,
the robot's inventor:

Colin Mayhew wrote:

>I can assure you that the Cooper project is a real and
>very tangible one. Your suspicion is perhaps
>understandable because the leaps we've made are rather
>significant compared to the current state of
>commercial AI. As Mr. Clarke wrote in Technology and
>the Future, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is
>indistinguishable from magic." What's important to
>remember in this famous quotation is not that the
>technology becomes magic, but rather that technology
>seems magical only to those who don't understand the
>details or are not knowledgeable of the history of a
>technology's development. It's for that reason that
>I've placed notes online and have included videos from
>different stages of the project. Have you seen videos
>of people interacting with the Kismet robot? That
>robot uses a fairly simple emotional model, yet people
>bond to it and treat it as a 'living' creature! It has
>become something magical from bits of aluminum and
>electrons whizzing inside silicon. Your experiences in
>the research sector I'm sure have shown you how
>disconnected the public can be from the realities of
>technology. There are autonomous machines (be they in
>medicine or oil well drilling) so removed from our
>daily lives that when we finally learn of them, we are
>shocked and amazed---far more so than had we followed
>the gradual steps and wrong turns the engineers made
>developing and finessing the technology. This project
>is real, and it, and the systems I've developed for it
>are going to change the way we live our lives. The
>most recent software revision I've tested on the robot
>has some powerful reasoning capabilities, a large step
>more powerful and versatile than that employed on the
>robot when I recorded the videos you may have seen
>online. They are perhaps powerful enough to seem like
>magic, but both devil and the angel of creativity are
>in the details. Soon enough, these little creatures
>will be animating the robots all around us and making
>our lives safer and more fulfilling.
>
>Regards,
>Colin
>
>
> --- "Chris S." wrote: > Is your
>Mini Cooper powered robotic biped a real
>
>>project? Your site
>>seems detailed enough, but the videos look
>>suspiciously like computer
>>generations. Either way, it's an entertaining feat.
>>
>>Sincerely,
>>Chris S.

Take it for what you will. I just can't believe someone built something like that essentially alone in just a few years. It just does too much and it moves too fluidily. For instance watch the video where it stops a run-away Car [r50rd.co.uk].

Re:Reply From Builder (Colin Mayhew)

Yep, remember your conservation of momentum, the bot doesn't move when it grabs the car, it should at least absorb part of the kinetic energy and have to push back, or be pulled along with the car a tiny bit. Consider a similar collision on a smaller scale, what would happen if you tried to halt a guy on a bicycle?
And notice the bot casts a shadow but the car doesn't. Totally fake. Also notice all these "tests" are done with a locked-down camera, that's a giveaway of a bad CG producer, anyone with real skills would have used a handheld camera and used move matching.

Inventors Actual WebSite

Here is what Colin Mayhew's Personal Yahoo! freebie website (in case it goes away again) says, since when I first looked it was out of bandwidth.

Welcome to the homepage
of Colin Mayhew
[picture of our good doctor]
Welcome. My name is Dr. Colin Mayhew, and you are visitor number

I'm hoping to make this web site a place where I can share information about myself, my family and my interests.

I hold a doctorate degree in engineering and worked for 30 years in the UK. Since my retirement, I have spent much of my free time in my laboratory. My other interests include reading, miniature locomotives and applied physics. To see my collection of miniature locomotives, click here. For engineering and applied physics links and downloads, click here.

Thanks for your interest.

This site was last updated 01/02/99

Email: [e-mail]

[The 2 linked pages are below]
[Locomotive link, each description has a black and white photo]

Pictures back to home

Scene at Greywood North terminal (circa. 1951) before the departure of the 3.10pm 'special' (locomotive on left of picture). This is a K5 (2-6-0) class loco. On right is an 'Immingham' class (4-6-0) loco owned by a drummer in a local pop group at the time.

My father (wearing his Canadian Pacific Railway hat) is sitting on the edge of the turntable pit in front of the purpose built engine shed. The engine on the far left is a 'Sterling' class single (2-2-2), Dad's hand is resting on the Immingham loco as shown in pic. 1.

This is me driving my own loco 'Eureka' which is a Pacific class (4-6-2) over the mere bridge viaduct. Riding in the train behind is my sister Jane and school buddy Charles. Noral were the company which supplied all the 'Dural' aluminium alloy railway track for the GCR.

A K5 loco on the turntable in steam and ready to go.

A friend with my loco Eureka on the turntable.

This is me (age about 8) steaming up my own engine. I dont know who the little enthusiast is on the left - he is probably Chairman of a London bank by now!

My father is sitting on Eureka on the turntable ready to go. In the background is another engine owner, 'Woody' who was a veterinary surgeon; he is leaning over his own locomotive - another Pacific class 4-6-2.

This is the skeleton tunnel or flyover with Eureka on the top level. The railway was sold in 1962 after my father's death and was reconstructed on a nearby farm estate.
Underneath the flyover is the Royal Scot class (4-6-2) driven.

This site was last updated 01/02/99
Email: [e-mail]

[Physics and downloads link]

Links back to home

History of quantum mechanics. Nicely details Kirchoff's theorem of blackbody radiation.

Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR).

Institute of Nanotechnology. Excellent venue to keep up on current events.

I highly recommend this abstact to anyone working on computing the area and centroid of multiple intensity-coded objects. Click here to download.
[links from above]
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/H istTopic s/The_Quantum_age_begins.html
http://www.cs.washi ngton.edu/research/jair/home.ht ml
http://www.nano.org.uk/
http://uk.geocities.c om/colinmayhewphd/brajovic_vl adimir_2001_1.pdf
This site was last updated 01/02/99
Email: [e-mail]

Someone spent a decent amount of time on this if fake.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The last update of this site is in 1999 if that is to be believed. I suppose it's either the real last modified date along with a real Doc Mayhew or it is another part of the hoax. Thoughts?

mirror

managed to mirror it here [69.55.225.122].

Stealth Marketing directed at Slashdot

Have you guys heard of "Stealth Marketing"? 60 Minutes covered it a few months back, but basically, imagine this scenario.

You're walking down times square, and a pretty couple with exotic accents, who look and act like tourists asks you to take their photo. They hand you their digital camera. You notice it's one you've never seen or heard of before, so you snap the photo, and then ask about it, and they proceed to tell you how cool this camera is.

You've just been 'Stealth Marketed' -- the tourists are fake, actors hired to stand in Times Square asking people to take their photo.

You're sitting in Starbucks and you see a guy playing a cool game on his laptop. Pretty soon, he's letting you try the game and you're hooked. Turns out he's also an actor hired to sit in the coffee shop and get people to try the game.

This looks to me like a Stealth Marketing campaign diliberately directed at the Slashdot crowd. Note the post came from "SomeRobotGuy", who, I'll bet, is also in on this gag.

The server was supposed to get slashdotted to hell and not work properly, as that lends an air of credibility to the hack.

You're all part of a campaign directed at people like us who read Slashdot, ArsTechnica, HardOCP, and Wired. Chances are this site will make the rounds on all the hardcore tech sites, and if it makes a few people consider buying a Mini-Cooper, then the Stealth Marketing guys have done their job.

Believe me, this won't be the last time you're "hacked" by Marketing types who are getting more clever about how to direct an advertising campaign at you without you even realising you're being advertised to.

Isn't it amazing?

You hear all kinds of noises in those videos, but none at all from its footsteps.

A 1500 lb anything is not going to be particularly quiet when it's moving... heck, I have a cat that makes more noise than that thing does.

This is about as real as a 9 dollar bill.

Scaling laws

Simple scaling laws that should be known by any engineer tell why bipeds of that size are not a good idea to begin with.

With increasing size the time constant of motion changes (froude number) making larger robots inherently slower. Also other laws indicate that the influence of gravition grows larger, make the robot difficult to control and prone to damage.

There are reasons why nature has not created bipeds of that size.