Are these guys actually serious?!
www.androidworld.com/prod19.htm
Haven't seen anyone else post this so I thought I would.
They even list a phone number.
"Valerie" for Christmas 2004.
-
GZ02
- Posts: 249
- Joined: Sun Sep 22, 2002 12:43 pm
- Technosexuality: Built
- Identification: Human
- Gender: Male
- Location: Toronto, Ontario
- Contact:
-
kb7rky
- Posts: 1228
- Joined: Sun May 26, 2002 11:38 am
- Location: Lewiston, Idaho
- Contact:
-
Keizo
- Posts: 769
- Joined: Sun May 26, 2002 11:42 am
- Location: The Dark Side
- Contact:
Re: "Valerie" for Christmas 2004.
Considering what Japan's "ASIMO" can and cannot do, her "to do" list looks impossible especially considering the cost. I doubt she can even stand, much less walk. It's really unbelievable when one views the progress of much lesser projects with much bigger budgets and larger teams. I've been following this for years, but had not seen the latest update. Thanks for the heads-up. It is also questionable since they did not include any new images or serious video footage. If I were filthy rich, I'd buy one just for the hell of it and just to let you know what's really going on. Alas, I am quite NON-rich.GZ02 wrote:Are these guys actually serious?!
www.androidworld.com/prod19.htm
Haven't seen anyone else post this so I thought I would.
They even list a phone number.
-
andoroido
- Posts: 680
- Joined: Mon Jun 17, 2002 8:01 am
- Technosexuality: Built
- Identification: Human
- Gender: Male
- x 3
- x 9
- Contact:
I especially love the -give me half the money now and half on delivery in a couple years - request. The specs are so unbelievable, and as Keizo notes, basically impossible, especially since there's no video or even a photo to show any progress on this.
All the photos on the site have been there for as long as I can remember, and they are basically photos of a mannequin and a primitive attempt at building a robot head skeleton (without really anything that'll make it MOVE or anything) yet.
The list of goals and specs looks like something I would have written either for a junior high school fantasy science report - or a progress report I might have written in engineering school if I wanted to sound busy, but hadn't actually built anything, or done any *serious* research.
I mean, I hope this guy can make something that meets even half of his claims, but....
Anyone wanna buy a bridge?
Caveat emptor.
andoroido
PS If you do plan on giving this guy over $50,000. please consider hiring me to do a feasibility study on this project for you.. I'll only charge you 1% of the projected costs.. so just send me $500 and I'll tell you if it's a good idea to drop $50,000 on this. It will be money well spent.
All the photos on the site have been there for as long as I can remember, and they are basically photos of a mannequin and a primitive attempt at building a robot head skeleton (without really anything that'll make it MOVE or anything) yet.
The list of goals and specs looks like something I would have written either for a junior high school fantasy science report - or a progress report I might have written in engineering school if I wanted to sound busy, but hadn't actually built anything, or done any *serious* research.
I mean, I hope this guy can make something that meets even half of his claims, but....
Anyone wanna buy a bridge?
Caveat emptor.
andoroido
PS If you do plan on giving this guy over $50,000. please consider hiring me to do a feasibility study on this project for you.. I'll only charge you 1% of the projected costs.. so just send me $500 and I'll tell you if it's a good idea to drop $50,000 on this. It will be money well spent.
-
DrFranklin
- Posts: 143
- Joined: Sat Nov 16, 2002 12:51 am
- Location: California
- Contact:
Trevor Blackwell's Robot Butler
From The San Jose ( where else?) Mercury News:
The inventor did it
ENTREPRENEUR'S VISION IS NO MYSTERY: TO BUILD A BUTLER FOR U.S. HOUSEHOLDS
By Matt Marshall
Mercury News
In a little office annex tucked behind downtown Mountain View, entrepreneur Trevor Blackwell is busy in his playpen.
He zips around the room on his homemade scooter, a clone of the much-hyped Segway. He tinkers with Dexter, his half-finished 6-foot-tall robot. He banters with his assistant, who's called ``Fingerman'' because he's in charge of Dexter's fingers and hands.
Blackwell is a classic Silicon Valley nerd -- which is to say, he works and plays technology.
Blackwell's passion is ``balancing technology,'' which uses feedback from gyroscope sensors to allow objects to stay upright even when forces like gravity push them over. Both Dexter and the Segway clone are attempts at finding that perfect balance.
His goal with Dexter is to build a robot that will become a virtual butler for America's 100 million households. Dexter, named for his dexterity, will have to learn to walk, cook, clean, mend clothes and make the morning coffee.
``Who wouldn't want to have a butler?'' he says.
The dream of Dexter started back in 2001, when Blackwell found himself with enough cash to wander off in search of an idea. He had launched a start-up, Viaweb, that set up online stores for retailers, and he sold it to Yahoo for $49 million.
That made Blackwell a ``low eight-digit'' fortune -- enough to support some serious dabbling.
As he pondered what would be the ``next big thing,'' he made a long list of possibilities. He crossed off things like biotech -- ``I was too old to learn that'' -- and decided to make something that everyone would use.
That's when he stumbled on the idea of robots.
The robots won't be using artificial intelligence. People will control them remotely by joystick.
He'll start with an easier market, selling Dexter to big industrial companies that won't make him compete on price. Those will be the ``dirty, dangerous, dull jobs,'' like scraping asbestos off ceilings, Blackwell says.
Fry it up in a pan
Then he wants to move Dexter into more genteel places, such as the home, where it would take out the garbage, do the laundry and mend clothes. By the end of next year, Blackwell wants Dexter to make a grilled cheese sandwich for the venture capitalists -- go to the fridge, take out cheese and bread, put it all together and toast it in the frying pan.
His company is called Anybots, and right now it's just Blackwell and his assistant. It hasn't made money, and Dexter can't walk more than three steps before he falls over. Blackwell is financing the company and wants to get Dexter working with less than a million dollars invested.
Of course, Dexter has enemies -- among them, another robot named Asimo. Asimo and his several clones are built by Honda Motor. In its own downtown Mountain View office -- a stone's throw from Blackwell's -- Honda is apparently tapping into the progress of robotics work at Stanford University.
Asimo can walk forward and backward, turn sideways, climb up and down stairs and turn corners -- so he has a head start on Dexter. Asimo makes his Bay Area debut in late January at San Jose's Tech Museum of Innovation. (Honda's project leader for Asimo, Stephen Keeny, said he hasn't heard about Dexter.)
Asimo, though, must be accompanied by an engineer when it performs, Blackwell notes. He wants to do better. Dexter should be able to wade through ``toys strewn all over the floor'' by himself.
Dexter is getting plenty of practice in Blackwell's playpen. He has to share the space with Blackwell's other toys, including the balancing baby: the Segway clone.
Segway clone
Sure, the original Segway took years to fine-tune, financed by $90 million from venture capitalists. But Blackwell spent a piddling $2,000 and about two weeks of labor on his clone, which looks remarkably like the Segway. He built it from off-the-shelf parts, so it's less polished than the Segway, but it's a whole lot cheaper.
He can't make money off the clone. Even though Blackwell built his own from scratch, the Segway company owns the patent on such scooters.
So why do it?
Because he could -- just for fun.
The 200 lines of software code needed to help balance the Segway clone came to Blackwell on a whim. He wrote the first version in an evening, got the prototype running in 60 hours and then took 40 more to get it to work well.
``I feel like a total techno-dweeb riding it around,'' he says on his Web site. ``It just screams `Silicon Valley nerd.' ''
``OK, I am in fact a Silicon Valley nerd,'' he adds, ``but I don't want everyone to know it.''
To demonstrate, Blackwell circles on a dime. He jumps it off of a sidewalk. He opens the door on it.
He concedes it isn't as slick as the state-of-the-art Segway, and he's had a few wipeouts.
``It's the Model T'' version of the balancing scooter, he declares.
He still remembers the lesson he learned as a child from the Greek legend of Icarus, who flew with wings made of beeswax, only to reach the sun and crash and burn. It always grated on Blackwell that the myth was supposed to show that pride leads to a fall.
The real lesson, he says, is that it's important to get the details right -- like using epoxy glue instead of beeswax, or spritzing water on the wings to keep them cool.
And, of course, it helps to get the balance right.
where else?) Mercury News:The inventor did it
ENTREPRENEUR'S VISION IS NO MYSTERY: TO BUILD A BUTLER FOR U.S. HOUSEHOLDS
By Matt Marshall
Mercury News
In a little office annex tucked behind downtown Mountain View, entrepreneur Trevor Blackwell is busy in his playpen.
He zips around the room on his homemade scooter, a clone of the much-hyped Segway. He tinkers with Dexter, his half-finished 6-foot-tall robot. He banters with his assistant, who's called ``Fingerman'' because he's in charge of Dexter's fingers and hands.
Blackwell is a classic Silicon Valley nerd -- which is to say, he works and plays technology.
Blackwell's passion is ``balancing technology,'' which uses feedback from gyroscope sensors to allow objects to stay upright even when forces like gravity push them over. Both Dexter and the Segway clone are attempts at finding that perfect balance.
His goal with Dexter is to build a robot that will become a virtual butler for America's 100 million households. Dexter, named for his dexterity, will have to learn to walk, cook, clean, mend clothes and make the morning coffee.
``Who wouldn't want to have a butler?'' he says.
The dream of Dexter started back in 2001, when Blackwell found himself with enough cash to wander off in search of an idea. He had launched a start-up, Viaweb, that set up online stores for retailers, and he sold it to Yahoo for $49 million.
That made Blackwell a ``low eight-digit'' fortune -- enough to support some serious dabbling.
As he pondered what would be the ``next big thing,'' he made a long list of possibilities. He crossed off things like biotech -- ``I was too old to learn that'' -- and decided to make something that everyone would use.
That's when he stumbled on the idea of robots.
The robots won't be using artificial intelligence. People will control them remotely by joystick.
He'll start with an easier market, selling Dexter to big industrial companies that won't make him compete on price. Those will be the ``dirty, dangerous, dull jobs,'' like scraping asbestos off ceilings, Blackwell says.
Fry it up in a pan
Then he wants to move Dexter into more genteel places, such as the home, where it would take out the garbage, do the laundry and mend clothes. By the end of next year, Blackwell wants Dexter to make a grilled cheese sandwich for the venture capitalists -- go to the fridge, take out cheese and bread, put it all together and toast it in the frying pan.
His company is called Anybots, and right now it's just Blackwell and his assistant. It hasn't made money, and Dexter can't walk more than three steps before he falls over. Blackwell is financing the company and wants to get Dexter working with less than a million dollars invested.
Of course, Dexter has enemies -- among them, another robot named Asimo. Asimo and his several clones are built by Honda Motor. In its own downtown Mountain View office -- a stone's throw from Blackwell's -- Honda is apparently tapping into the progress of robotics work at Stanford University.
Asimo can walk forward and backward, turn sideways, climb up and down stairs and turn corners -- so he has a head start on Dexter. Asimo makes his Bay Area debut in late January at San Jose's Tech Museum of Innovation. (Honda's project leader for Asimo, Stephen Keeny, said he hasn't heard about Dexter.)
Asimo, though, must be accompanied by an engineer when it performs, Blackwell notes. He wants to do better. Dexter should be able to wade through ``toys strewn all over the floor'' by himself.
Dexter is getting plenty of practice in Blackwell's playpen. He has to share the space with Blackwell's other toys, including the balancing baby: the Segway clone.
Segway clone
Sure, the original Segway took years to fine-tune, financed by $90 million from venture capitalists. But Blackwell spent a piddling $2,000 and about two weeks of labor on his clone, which looks remarkably like the Segway. He built it from off-the-shelf parts, so it's less polished than the Segway, but it's a whole lot cheaper.
He can't make money off the clone. Even though Blackwell built his own from scratch, the Segway company owns the patent on such scooters.
So why do it?
Because he could -- just for fun.
The 200 lines of software code needed to help balance the Segway clone came to Blackwell on a whim. He wrote the first version in an evening, got the prototype running in 60 hours and then took 40 more to get it to work well.
``I feel like a total techno-dweeb riding it around,'' he says on his Web site. ``It just screams `Silicon Valley nerd.' ''
``OK, I am in fact a Silicon Valley nerd,'' he adds, ``but I don't want everyone to know it.''
To demonstrate, Blackwell circles on a dime. He jumps it off of a sidewalk. He opens the door on it.
He concedes it isn't as slick as the state-of-the-art Segway, and he's had a few wipeouts.
``It's the Model T'' version of the balancing scooter, he declares.
He still remembers the lesson he learned as a child from the Greek legend of Icarus, who flew with wings made of beeswax, only to reach the sun and crash and burn. It always grated on Blackwell that the myth was supposed to show that pride leads to a fall.
The real lesson, he says, is that it's important to get the details right -- like using epoxy glue instead of beeswax, or spritzing water on the wings to keep them cool.
And, of course, it helps to get the balance right.
-
livewire
- Posts: 62
- Joined: Fri Sep 20, 2002 12:54 pm
- Contact:
Yeah, I agree. I'm as hopefull as the next guy, but this place seems WAYYYY TOO optimistic. I doubt that thing will even stand, much less change lightbulbs. (notice how it's leaning up against a wall in the photos...)? Anyway, good try, but I can't imagine anyone, under any circumstances, giving this guy money based on this site...
her list of "can" and "cannot" do's is here: http://www.androidworld.com/prod52.htm
her list of "can" and "cannot" do's is here: http://www.androidworld.com/prod52.htm
-
Keizo
- Posts: 769
- Joined: Sun May 26, 2002 11:42 am
- Location: The Dark Side
- Contact:
Unless they are actually aliens and are using advanced alien technology, I still have my doubts. The muscular system would have to be composed of very tough contracting fiberous material (not unlike our own muscles) in order to streamline this android to have the strength they are claiming and to give her any pliability. Fortunately this material has already been developed 3 years ago at MIT, but they are being very uncooperative with the patents and sharing the technology. We would be better off spending the money on several of the new realdolls with the interchangable faces!livewire wrote:Yeah, I agree. I'm as hopefull as the next guy, but this place seems WAYYYY TOO optimistic. I doubt that thing will even stand, much less change lightbulbs. (notice how it's leaning up against a wall in the photos...)? Anyway, good try, but I can't imagine anyone, under any circumstances, giving this guy money based on this site...
her list of "can" and "cannot" do's is here: http://www.androidworld.com/prod52.htm
-
GZ02
- Posts: 249
- Joined: Sun Sep 22, 2002 12:43 pm
- Technosexuality: Built
- Identification: Human
- Gender: Male
- Location: Toronto, Ontario
- Contact:
Well guys, I actually got around to actually contacting the guy thru e-mail today, asking him to divulge anymore info if he could.
No answer as yet but I'll keep you posted. Incidentally, I don't have 50g's available either and if I did, I'd find better ways to spend it.
It's nice to dream though...
No answer as yet but I'll keep you posted. Incidentally, I don't have 50g's available either and if I did, I'd find better ways to spend it.
It's nice to dream though...
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 20 guests