amazing robot: Omnimaru2

Yep pretty amazing, but do you think it has any autonomous modes? Looks
like it is being driven from a PS2 controller, by the way it moves,
like when it was trying to align itself for a kick.

--
Randy M. Dumse
www.newmicros.com
Caution: Objects in mirror are more confused than they appear.

Yes, since it competes in Robo-One competitions, and about half the
events at such competitions are autonomous -- including the qualifying
demonstration.


Yes, I'm sure it was being controlled for that, and for the combat
demonstrations too.

Best,
- Joe

Ok, someone spent a lot of time programming various semi-autonomous
moves into a cute little mechanical man, but really, who cares? Is it
fundamentally any different from what the animators do every day at
Pixar? Excellent entertainment and probably great training for making
additional little semi-autonomous mechanical men who can do still more
closed-ended stunts. Yawn.

I'll be impressed when a robot, even a very simple one, can fend for
itself in the real world by sensing its environment and adapting (like
Stanley in the DARPA Grand Ghallenge). The main thing these little
"humanoid" robots show is how much time and money people are willing to
spend on fancy toys. They might as well be humanoid pencil-sharpeners.

--
Joe Legris

The thing is Joe .. these little toy robots build interest in the hobby.

Many of the people building these 'toys' are future Darpa competitors.

You must live in a drab world if everything has to have real world
application to be worthwhile.

Mike

     As someone who ran one of the DARPA Grand Challenge teams
(Team Overbot), I'm impressed with these little humanoid robots.
We're seeing about 70% of the functionality of the Asimo hardware
at about 1% of the cost.

     The hobbyist humanoid robots are rapidly improving.  The
better ones now have servos with force feedback info, some
rate gyros, contact switches on hands and feet, a camera,
and a data link.  That's almost good enough to get serious
about autonomy.  The force feedback info needs to get better,
the force sensing needs to be better, the gyros need to
become a full 6DOF inertial unit, the vision system needs
go stereo, and the data link needs to get up to WiFi levels.
Then you have the hardware needed for serious work.  Right
now, the little humanoids don't have enough data coming
back to become intelligently autonomous.  That can be fixed,
and it's not going to be expensive.

     The software still tends to be rather simple, but
once such hardware can be purchased for $1000 or so, I
expect the software to improve rapidly.

     Robot hobbyists, though, are about to face the same
transition game designers hit when games went 3D.
Suddenly, you needed to know much, much more math and theory
to make it work.  The game community was able to cope.
A few really bright people ground through the theory problems,
papers, how-to articles and theory papers were published,
code libraries were written, programmers got up to speed
on matrix algebra, and soon everybody was doing it.

     Then the game community had to do it again when
games got physics.  That was hard to digest, but
that's standard now, too.  Game programmers had
to learn differential equations, but we got through that.

     That's about to happen to hobbyist robotics.
You're going to need more math and theory in a year
or two to make your humanoid autonomous.  Dynamics.
Control theory.  Adaptive control theory.  Vision
processing.  3D modelling from data.  Simultaneous
localization and mapping.  All that academic work
over the last twenty years is about to be used.

     It's going to be really great.  Tough, but really
great.

     What's going to make it really great is that you
can afford to make mistakes with these little humanoids.
The Asimo-sized machines are so expensive that they can't
really do much experimental locomotion work, because
the things will fall down.  The hobbyists can.
Even if you break them, you can usually fix them without
spending too much.  That's a very good thing.

                John Nagle
                Animats

Thanks for writing such an interesting reply, even though it was a month
ago. One of my friends is into Robo-One, and wanted to buy a RoboNova as
soon as he got some money together, so I've done some research into these
robots myself.

I have a long-term goal of building a much more complex robot (based on a
velociraptor, using series elastic actuators). However, it is a multi-year
project, and it would be neat to have something to play with in the
meantime. I looked around, and found an extremely interesting new kit
available:

http://www.robotshop.ca/home/products/robot-kits/advanced-robot-kits/robotis-bioloid-comprehensive-kit.html

This is an amazing kit, mainly because the servos provided are so
interesting and powerful. They have more than twice the torque as the
RoboNova stock servos, and they are controlled via a daisy-chained serial
system. They have position, torque, and temperature feedback, and can be
run either as normal servos or in continuous rotation mode (without
hardware changes).

So what I'm thinking, is you get one of these kits, and a gumstix (which I
already have) to replace the controller it comes with. Since its a simple
serial protocol (and its fully documented in the servo manual), controlling
18 or 20 servos from a gumstix would be no problem. You can run some
serious software on a gumstix, plus have a bluetooth (or wifi if you have
that model gumstix) socket interface for real-time
visualization/feedback/control on a PC.

With the force/position feedback servos, you could do some fairly
sophisticated dynamic gait work. Add these parts:

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_idt1
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id95
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_idy15
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_idc7

and a gumstix and you could have a pretty wicked small humanoid for under
$2K.

The future you described may be closer than you thought...

Later,
Jon

--------------------------------------------------------------
   Jon Hylands      Jon@huv.com      http://www.huv.com/jon

  Project: Micro Seeker (Micro Autonomous Underwater Vehicle)
           http://www.huv.com

http://www.robotshop.ca/home/products/robot-kits/advanced-robot-kits/robotis-bioloid-comprehensive-kit.html

The Robotis Bioloid kit was just reviewed in Robot magazine -- and I
agree, it's a very well-done system.


Yep.  It's not the only way to accomplish that, but it's certainly among
the best.

Best,
- Joe

They put the review online:

http://www.botmag.com/articles/robotis_bioloid_edutainment_robot_kit.shtml

Later,
Jon

--------------------------------------------------------------
   Jon Hylands      Jon@huv.com      http://www.huv.com/jon

  Project: Micro Seeker (Micro Autonomous Underwater Vehicle)
           http://www.huv.com

Jon,

The online article dates back to the product announcement at the CES
show. The review featured on the cover of the current print issue
(Winter 2006) is much more detailed and current.

Jon Hylands wrote:

http://www.robotshop.ca/home/products/robot-kits/advanced-robot-kits/robotis-bioloid-comprehensive-kit.html

The Bioloid is an excellent kit, especially if you want to experiment
with quite a few different configurations and designs. The Bioloid
fanatics over on the RoboSavvy forum have been going at it like
gang-busters including doing considerable reverse engineering:

http://robosavvy.com/Support/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewforum&f=5

They even have one of the support people from Robotis actively
participating in the forum.

OK, let's see what you can build, smart ass.

All right, I'm sorry, that was out of line.  I should get a newsreader
with a 5-minute delayed posting queue so I don't actually send the first
heated response that comes to mind.

Let me try to express that sentiment in a more reasonable manner.

I'm surprised, and somewhat disappointed, by the disparaging remarks a
few people here make about even the best of the Robo-One robots (the one
mentioned at the start of this thread is a good example).  Not too long
ago you could count the number of walking bipeds on one hand, and each
of them was a research project into which tens of thousands of dollars
(if not more) had been poured.  In only a few years, these hobbyists
have replicated many of the feats of robots that cost orders of
magnitude more, and every year they've been getting better.

If one of these disparaging posters had long ago built a bot that could
walk on two legs (actively maintaining balance), climb up and down and
down stairs, pass a ball from one hand to another, get to its feet from
any position in which it might happen to fall (or be knocked), climb
across a horizontal pole, traverse a rotating platform, and so on, THEN
I'd say, "OK, from his point of view I can see how this is not that
impressive."  Especially if said poster had managed to do all that for
under $10K, as I think most of the Robo-One competitors have done.

But I strongly suspect that, in most cases, the disparaging remarks are
NOT coming from these feats being "old hat" at all.  Rather, I suspect
that what we have here is a bit of jealousy, because some guy who runs a
noodle shop in Japan has built a mechanical marvel far beyond what the
poster has ever managed.  It's the old defense mechanism of trying to
build yourself up by tearing the other guy down.  It's just not a very
effective defense, since it's so transparent.

More charitably, I suppose, it's possible that some such posters are
simply interested only in AI, and not in mechanics or dynamics at all.  
It's true that the AI these robots display is fairly rudimentary, though
their mechanics are both elegant and effective.  But this is
comp.robotics.misc, not comp.ai.  If one has interest only in AI, and
has no regard for mechanical wonders like these, then I don't understand
why one would be reading this newsgroup in the first place.

More practically, I predict (by exptrapolating from observed trends)
that in a few more years, Robo-One style competitions will be as popular
here as they are now in Japan, easily eclipsing all other types of robot
competitions combined.  A large number of new hobbyists will enter the
field, many of them with no previous robot experience (like Onimaru2's
builder).  This is the style of robotics that will inspire kids to study
science & engineering, and eventually, will make its way into our homes
in the form of large humanoid robots that are actually useful.

This is not to say that other types of robotics aren't exciting or
useful -- they certainly are (I'm eagerly awaiting the day when my car
can drive itself, for example).  But attempting to resist what may later
be seen as the "humanoid robotics revolution" seems a bit childish.  
Better to embrace it, and think about how our own particular areas of
interest can contribute to, or benefit from, the growing enthusiasm of
the public for these amazing machines.

And please accept my apologies for my earlier remark.

Best,
- Joe

I don't deny that the little robots are impressive feats of engineering
and artistry that only a rare few have the talent and intelligence to
build, but IMO they have very little to do with AI, natural behaviour,
or even industrial robots. They are toys in the same sense that styrene
plastic car models were toys a generation ago - they require highly
developed skills that have little to do with the things modelled. The
results are intriguing, but fragile, unstable, and ultimately useless.
Little robots may help to teach perseverence, a sense of style, and all
sorts of things that enrich the builder's lives, but the actual robots
are just expensive throwaways.

Here are some questions that come to mind:

- Why humanoid? To me this is smoke, mirrors and hype. No device that
small could ever do the things a real human can do, except as a
caricature. They are cute, fun, and impressive but why not a cat-oid or
a rat-oid? Not cute enough? Natural behaviour too boring? Try making a
robot that can behave like a real rat. No amount of what passes for
"humanoid" programming will get you even close.

- What's the attraction of karate, fighting and various other childish
obsessions? The resemblance to the offerings at Toys-R-Us is telling.

- What evidence is there that this stuff will inspire future engineers
and scientists? It seems more likely to inspire future wrestlers. I
have no data, but I suspect that most successful scientists spent more
time on school work than on expensive time-consuming hobbies.

--
Joe Legris

I can agree with that.  But then industrial robots don't have much to do
with AI, nor does natural behavior have much to do with industrial
robots.  There are a variety of unrelated subfields of robotics, and no
one robot project is likely to address all of them.


This is unfair, I think.  These robots are not fragile; the ones that
are don't make it very far in the competition.  Many "real" research
robots don't take very well to even falling down on their own; these
ones are actively knocked down and beat upon, repeatedly, and they keep
getting back up.  Nor are they unstable; again, if they were, they
wouldn't be able to take multiple hits without falling over, as the best
of these can do.  The good ones employ acceleration sensors and
automatically adjust their footing and posture to maintain balance --
not a trivial problem in itself.  I rather suspect that if ASIMO were
subjected to unpredictable external forces, in scale proportion to what
these Robo-One units handle, it wouldn't fare as well.

As for useless -- well, let's be honest, almost all our robotics
projects are useless in terms of immediate practical benefit.  We do
them to grow our skills, to inspire others, and maybe someday to
contribute to something which can someday be of use.  These robots do
all those same things too, and more effectively than the little
two-wheel-and-caster robot I've managed to half-build myself.  Perhaps
your own project has more practical value, but that's no reason to
disparage those of us who do it primarily for love of robotics.


The Japanese in general feel that if robots are going to be generally
useful machines in our world, they have to be able to navigate
environments and operate devices designed for humans.  That implies legs
and hands.  I think there is some merit to this view.


Of course not, but that misses the point.  Being small keeps the costs
down, providing a platform on which far more people can develop new
techniques and approaches.  The basic problems are the same; being small
does not make it any easier to maintain balance, climb stairs, or work a
doorknob.  So instead of one million-dollar project trying to solve
these problems, we have thousands of thousand-dollar projects trying to
solve them.  That seems like a good route to progress to me.


No, too far removed from the ultimate goal.  Cats and rats can do the
laundry, fetch the mail, load the dishwasher, rake the leaves, and put
books back where they belong on the shelf.  A robot to do any ONE of
these tasks could have a specialized form, but if you want one household
robot that does them all, the human shape is probably best.

Not that these robots are capable of most of that yet -- but if you look
at how much progress has been made in the last four years, and compare
it to the previous 10 or 20, it seems clear to me that this approach is
a productive one.


And conversely, no amount of "ratoid" programming will get you close to
a robot that behaves like a real person.  So?
 

Well, I'll admit that the boxing competitions are pretty obvious
crowd-pleasers, though they do raise a number of interesting problems
(like applying force to another object, and accepting unpredictable
impulses yourself, without falling over).  But look past those at the
other competitions -- stair-climbing and door-opening and so on.  And
note that they don't build a bot specific to any one task; the goal is
always to have one bot that takes the medal in all the various tasks.  

It's exactly that sort of generality which is the real heart of
robotics, I think.  It's relatively easy to build a task-specific
machine; just look at the dishwasher for example.  What separates robots
apart from mere appliances is that they can do a wide variety of tasks,
even ones not anticipated when it was built.


Wow.  I'm dumbfounded by this sentiment.

That last statement didn't come out right. I'm not against hobbies - of
course they can be productive counterbalances to school. The emphasis
was on the words "expensive time-consuming".

By the way, thanks for the civilized responses to my probes. I'm not
down on robotics as a hobby - I'm just a little discouraged by the way
it interfaces with pop-culture.

--
Joe Legris.

-snip-

The reason people spend so much time on humanoid form, function and
the movements based on karate etc is money. The humanoid movement
captures the attention of the young and older generation. Attention
equals money and money equals funding at schools. More competition
equals more attention and more money.

Not many people are interested in a robotic rat.

    About fifteen years ago, when Rod Brooks had done his insect
robots at MIT, he came out to Stanford to talk about "Cog", that
sort-of humanoid torso with facial expressions.  He was talking
this up as a path to human-level intelligence.  I asked him,
"You've done insect level AI.  Why not try for mouse-level AI
next.  You might be able to achieve that".  He replied "Because
I don't want to go down in history as the man who developed the
world's greatest robot mouse".

    Well, Cog was a dud, it didn't produce any significant advance
towards human-level AI, but it got lots of PR for a while.

                John Nagle
                Animats

Fundamentally completely different. One is real. The other exists only
as data. The one in the bit-plane needn't bother with cost, sensors,
battery drain, motor stretch, mechanical fatique, or even physics.

As the other Joe pointed out, this is all about inspiration. Woody in
Toy Story doesn't inspire the mechanical challenge that even a simple
servo-based biped can.

-- Gordon