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."

I just love photoshop...

[Richard N. Bush]

... and After Effects.

Sigh

[srcosmo]

Fifteen comments and the server appears to have bit the dust.
Slashdot should come up with some automatic link-cacheing system or something...

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

[MrBlue VT]

Yeah, I mean I guess they are trying out of the box advertising, but stuff like this isn't so good. It suckers people who don't know what the state of the art is in robotics and don't know that what is displayed here is all fake. Now I'll have to see how many of my less technically adept (or frankly just gullible) friends send this link to me.

OT:Geez.

[Jonah Hex]

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

Re:Standard Bending Unit?

[nomadic]

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:CG totally

[ruprechtjones]

Yup, this is advertising. Genius, but still just a Mini plug. Check the whois then google the parent company.

Re:Reply From Builder (Colin Mayhew)

[sakusha]

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.

Re:Standard Bending Unit?

[BLAG-blast]

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?

Re:Standard Bending Unit?

[jwriney]

Gosh, asking for permission is so hard! It's clearly better to crush their site and potentially make them pay thousands of dollars in bandwidth overages instead.

--riney

Re:Standard Bending Unit?

[Rolo Tomasi]

I don't think so. If they honor the robots.txt, they should be fine. Google and archive.org do basically the same thing.

Obviously...

[Whelzorn]

Think about this: It took Honda years, and millions of dollars to create the ASIMO robot, which does nothing compared to what this one did stopping the car, and unscrewing the bolt from the wheel (robot arm dexterity test). ASIMO was also created by a huge team of mechanics, scientists, and programmers. This guy actually wants us to believe that he 1. built the thing, 2. programmed all the fast, complex motions, and 3. built it out of a cooper? bullshit. I dont even think that with the weight of the car applied to the motors the thing was using, that they could have as much torque and speed as they did. This may have been more believable if he made a more official looking website, and faked some press activity. I mean if it were real, this would have been all over the news by now, doing demonstrations and everything.

Re:Geez.

[gad_zuki!]

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

In this case 'small hobbyist' turns out to be guerrilla/deceptive marketers and the /. effect is great weapon to use on these assholes. [adbusters.org]

...this smells like a fake to me...

[omarin]

I love robots, but after looking at the site & the videos my "bullshit" meter went off:

1. The 2nd line of the page says "User logged in, proceed." This seems out of place on a technical guy's webpage, as if it were put there for the nontechnical/credulous to think "oh, computerese, must be technical and real"...
   
2. The robot makes me think of CG in several scenes.
   
3. If this robot is so fabulous, why haven't we heard anything before now? (Where are the drooling reporters to report on this neat news story?)
   
4. I find it hard to believe that one guy and his ball-and-chain could do work of the caliber (and cost) comparable to MIT or Honda's Asimo bipedal robot...
   
5. Occam's Internet bullshit razor: if it's too good to be true, and it's on the internet, it's probably bullshit

Of course, I'd love to be wrong (I hope I am, I'd love to see such a robot out and about working), but until we get some independent, trustworthy verification I'll take this cum grano salis (...with a grain of salt.)

Re:Reply From Builder (Colin Mayhew)

[rbilli]

I agree, you can see the robot being dragged for a short distance after it 'grabs' the car. However, you can also see the front of the car dip, prior to being grabbed, as the driver applies the brakes sharply to bring the car to rest.

Re:It's Not Real

[laddhebert]

Comeo on, lighten up dude. It carries a way-cool factor is really fun to look at. They aren't trying to sell you a transformer...

-L

Linus's Law

[Rhodnius]

I'm surprised how fast all the flaws with the video were exposed by readers here. How did Linus's Law go again... "With enough eyeballs, all fakery is shallow"...?