EVER-1 Video

Pagan · Post by **Pagan** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 4:34 pm

I agree the ever-1 (what a stupid name) moves much less fluently then Actroid, but actually she is much closer to a fembot than Actroid is.

Ever-1 uses servo motors for movement and only relies on an external (electrical) power source, while Actroid uses pneumatics and reqires an external compressor as well as a huge air tank. It can be seen (and heard) in a few early Actroid vids.

Sadly actroid will never evolve into a household-type fembot, but with Ever-1 it would be possible (e.g. using a tether for power supply)

tamaneko · Post by **tamaneko** » Mon Jul 10, 2006 6:56 pm

Neat, but...you know, I really don't see the difference between these "androids" and the animatronics that Disney and other U.S companies have been making for years. They still look more-or-less preprogrammed, rather than being actual robots that can do more than just react to someone's presence.

andoroido · Post by **andoroido** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 12:03 am

Exactly. These pre-programmed displays aren't exactly eye-popping, Hollywood has been able to do stuff like this for a long time.

However, the Japanese actroid has other capabilities. (It is a university research project)
There was a video of it flinching and reacting to being touched.
During the World Expo last year, the actroids were used as inforamtion booths, supposedly able to listen to and respond to questions in a few languages (still, everything is pre-programmed, but far beyond the "Welcome to the Hall of Presidents" animatronics at Disney)

But, yes, the Japanese version uses compressed air, which seems like a bad way to go if you want her to be able to move freely on internal power.
But Japan has all the other humanoid robots that CAN walk freely (but a bit slowly) once they are thin enough to fit inside an Actroid shell, it'll be the breakthrough.

Pagan · Post by **Pagan** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 3:03 am

tamaneko wrote:Neat, but...you know, I really don't see the difference between these "androids" and the animatronics that Disney...

andoroido wrote:... still, everything is pre-programmed...

So sad, but so true. IMHO Strong AI has made abolutly no progress in the past 20 years and could, on a pessimistic view, be considered dead/impossible.

The "power source" problem won't get solved either. So if we are lucky we could see dumb tether-pulling japanese bots in perhpas 10 years

Well, better than nothing

andoroido · Post by **andoroido** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 6:43 am

Asimo (the famous walking robot) doesn't need a tether, I saw it myself, and that was a few years ago. Meanwhile SONY made those 18 inch dancing robots, and a newer version of Asimo can jog.

As far as I see, maybe if they can get all the electronics/power for movement crammed into the shell, and the AI that made judgments and commanded the shell were in a seperate platform, conveyed by radio, it would probably work and save power, but introduce the problem of a bit of lag. But it also allows you to make the AI computer as big and complex as you can afford, or maybe more simply, have a human operate the shell via some kind of VR.

So many of the SF/anime robots go by this pattern, with the antenna/earpieces on the various gynoids as transceivers for the actual AI which is located somewhere else.

ehy · Post by **ehy** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 6:10 am

[quote="PaganIMHO Strong AI has made abolutly no progress in the past 20 years and could, on a pessimistic view, be considered dead/impossible.[/quote]

Not impossible. Just not many people seriously working on it since it was realized that Strong AI isn't necessary for most of the things we want computers to do.