MIT’s Rodney Brooks has an adage (to paraphrase): A bunch of working “dumb” bots (i.e. robots w/little computing power that sense and react directly to their environment) is better than one broken “smart” bot (i.e. a robot that maps its world, plans optimal routes through it, etc).
I propose a corollary: A robot that is actually on the market is better than a bunch of bots that are endlessly demo’d at trade shows. Look at the Hondo P3 and the Sony SDR-4/Qrio vs. the Wow Wee Robosapien and the iRobot Roomba. While Hondo and Sony keep parading around these perpetual demobots but never bring them to market (and Sony just turned the development lights out on Qrio), the Robosapien and the Roomba are proven market successes and are now several product generations in pedigree.
NEC’s answer to the Honda and Sony demobots is the PaPeRo (“Partner-Type Personal Robot”). While it’s an undisputedly cute little rug-rover, and has enjoyed plenty of ink and electrons since it was first rolled out in 2001, it remains in the prototype stage and there is still no release date. If you ask me, I think there should be a “put-up or shut-up” statute for such prototypes. If you show off a prototype and it garners a bunch of media attention, and then you don’t bring it to market in, let’s say three years, you gotta retire it; show us a NEW concept robot. Hey, maybe that’s what Sony did on their own. The SDR-4 cum Qrio couldn’t cut the mustard, so they did the only honorable thing, they took it off the world stage and stopped teasing us with it. So, what’s it going to be NEC? The shelves of my local Target or the wayside on the road to Robotopia?
And, in case you didn’t notice, the robots above that are actually on the market are of the “dumb bot” variety while the ones in perpetual prototypical stage are “smart bots.” Coincidence? We think not. Discuss. – [Gareth Branwyn]
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You absolutely hit the nail on the head with this comment! I have been drooling to own a PaPeRo since I first saw it. At the rate they are developing it, I’ll be dead by the time NEC finally thinks the thing is finally ready!
The solution to it is “NO PRESS FOR VAPOURWARE”. Somebody’s got to be able to come up with a handy graphic for that.
In response to this item, Craig DeForest emailed the following (posted with permission):
The lesson that dumb robots are better comes in many ways. As a graduate student at Stanford I remember being awed by the “smart product design” final contest — the first year I watched, student teams fielded autonomous robots to play “robo-tag”. The robots had vision, locomotion, and of course, on-board strategic algorithms. Most teams chose the “smart” approach and would spend up to a minute mapping their surroundings before even trying for the other robot. Far and away the winning robot was the “death mobile” — a four-wheeled affair with a simple analog feedback circuit to lock on to the other robot’s visual beacon. It would rotate once, get a visual lock, and pour as much power as possible into the wheels while maintaining directional lock. Never took more than about 2 seconds to tag the other robot — usually to the sound of little delicate sensors flying off of it. Never got tagged even once.
The reason why Honda and Sony don’t release their demo bots is the same reason Honda doesn’t release its race cars to be sold in the domestic market (despite the design being illegal for street use.) Anyways my point is they just want media attention so consumers will pay attention to their brand. If they were to release their demo bots they might be entering into a unprofitable venture, and the whole point of a business is just to make money for the shareholders, so why sell an expensive technology to a niche market while at the same time giving away all of your trade secrets? Who wants to by a Honda P3 that would probably cost more than a car? I can walk up stair and kick a soccer ball by myself I don’t need a $25,000 (?) robot to do it for me.
Point taken, at last as far as Honda is concerned. They’ve never presented the P-series of bots as anything BUT a development/concept effort. But both Sony and NEC have always maintained that their bots were coming to market and coming in the foreseeable future.
Sony has discontinued the QRIO robots. They never even made it to market.
http://brick-labs.com/article/111/a-sad-sad-day-no-more-sony-robots
They also discontinued the AIBO line as well (the pet dog series).
that dog wasnt all that impressive