A tipster sends us word of this image of impending doom. The translation on the page doesn’t help much, but it may just be an action figure. Dear god let it be just an action figure and not a full sized Asimo with guns! Anyway, apparently Asimo and and a female robot were putting on shows at the National Science Museum in Japan. And judging by that image it couldn’t have ended well.
Asimo can do it all. We already knew that. We’ve seen the little bot do just about everything. He has been in parades and even recently became a star at Sundance. Now it looks like he will be singing and dancing on stage in the future.
A patent app in Honda’s name shows a robot that can not only pick up a beat and even dance along. If that weren’t enough, the robot could recognize the song and sing the lyrics. It does this by using a “sound collecting unit,” a “voice signal generating unit” capable of scat singing, a “self-vocalized voice regulating unit,” and more.
Would you pay to see a singing and dancing Asimo? More importantly, would t be worth the price of admission?
Having five previous films, Honda seems to know what it is doing. Honda autos will debut their new short film entitled “Living With Robots” on January 22, 2010 at the Sundance Film Festival. Furthermore, the film will be supported by a live demonstration of ASIMO, the humanoid robot representing Honda. The film itself puts thoughts into your head about how life would be if you had to interact with robots in everyday tasks. For example, you encounter a robot when you need to ship a package or when you’re at the local food store and the robot is bagging your food for you. In the movie, the perspectives of different people interested in the study of robots and its future are shown. Those people range from science-fiction writers to hardcore engineers and philosophers. Now, hopefully this movie will stand up to the reputation of Honda’s other documentaries. Check out Honda’s other movies from the “Dream the Impossible” series here, on Honda’s Dedicated Website.
In October ASIMO had a 9th birthday party. On display were his many ancestors, all set up to show his evolution. He went all the way from bulky and awkward, to more human-like and cute. Time flies doesn’t it?
So you want to dress up as a robot for Halloween this year. Perfect choice. Everyone knows that robots are scarier than Ghosts and Goblins and on Halloween, robots are fueled by candy and can not be stopped. Below are 20 robot Halloween costumes that we think are cool.
There are many more out there of course. We can’t cover them all. If you know of a cool robot costume or have one yourself that you would like to share, let us know in the comments. I’m locking my door tight on Halloween. I don’t need any robots showing up all pissed off about the exposure we give them ’round these parts.
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Yamamoto Katsura, a graduate of Waseda University in Japan, created this amazing costume of Honda’s Asimo that you can wear. Well, as long as you have the $400 that it costs to build it.
Apparently, one of the most famous events held by Waseda University is the annual Honjo-Waseda 100km Hike, which takes 2 days and typically gathers a thousand participants. In keeping with the hike’s spirit of pushing one’s physical limits, some participants decided to take it one step further by donning costumes as a kind of handicap. Pretty soon people were trying to one-up each other to see who could make the best costume, and the World’s Longest Costume Parade was born, with the hike’s organizers fanning the flames by handing out awards.
The folks at Carnegie Mellon have been working on object avoidance techniques for robots. They’ve been working with both ASIMO and HRP-2. The robots can detect their surroundings, create 3D maps of obstacles and plan routes accordingly.
Two videos below. They really gave them quite a workout.
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Alright all you cosplay fans. Have you ever considered showing up at ComiCon in this? That’s right, now you can buy a kigurumi costume and dress like our favorite robot from Honda, ASIMO. You can find it at several Japanese online shops at 37.500 yen.
Thanks hobbymedia.it.
The researcher with the Spaceballs-looking dark helmet (Is he wearing Crocks?) is demonstrating the latest Brain Machine Interface (BMI) for robotics. Honda Research Institute with the help of Advanced Telecommunications Research (ATR) and Shimadzu Corporation have achieved robotic thought control using a sensor cap to measure electrical potential on the scalp and cerebral blood flow.
It’s not a new thing, but Honda claims its technology achieves the world’s highest accuracy at 90% without special training. Impressive stuff. Check the video after the break.
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Robot action figures that are actually made well are a rare commodity. This 6 inch tall, 1/8 scale ASIMO is one of the few exceptions. It features almost all of the same movement in the joints as the real ASIMO. He’s affordable too. About $20 if I remember correctly. They’re hard to find outside of Japan, but I’ve seen them on eBay, where they tend to cost more. I’ve been meaning to get one for a while now, myself.
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 Robots are a fact of life. Soon they will kill us. We’d like to document the coming apocalypse. |
