Comments on: Perpetual PaPeRo Prototyping

By: tbyte

tbyte — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 19:00:17 +0000

that dog wasnt all that impressive

By: Eric D. Burdo

Eric D. Burdo — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 03:18:44 +0000

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).

By: Gareth

Gareth — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 20:06:35 +0000

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.

By: Some Guy

Some Guy — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 00:27:01 +0000

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.

By: Gareth

Gareth — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 22:08:36 +0000

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.

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 20:26:48 +0000

The solution to it is “NO PRESS FOR VAPOURWARE”. Somebody’s got to be able to come up with a handy graphic for that.

By: metathuselah

metathuselah — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 17:54:07 +0000

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!