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Fujitsu HOAP-3 robot shows great promise as a replacement for our children
The HOAP-3, a humanoid robot by Fujitsu, is able to redefine the way it interacts with its environment as it learns. It accomplishes this by mimicking movements learned by way of a motion-capture-equipped human companion, watching others move around, and memorizing the way it's taught through handlers physically manipulating its limbs. The HOAP-3 can compare these actions to the ones it already knows, correcting and remembering what it needs to.
The study is being conducted by Sylvain Calinon and researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and the HOAP-3 is helping the team analyze how well a robot can adapt to a human environment.
Click on through to see a video of how the HOAP-3 learns new tricks.
Sylvain Calinon, via BotJunkie
By Janice Baker at 7:30 PM ON 12/27/07
This is great and all, but it's just so disappointing to see how slow advances in Robotics is progressing... I'm 33 now and, as a child, I was so sure that by now we'd have progressed much further than we are now.
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By Roboman at 10:25 PM ON 12/27/07
I think that you are selling the advances in robots short. If anything they are coming at an ever faster pace. Granted advances in robotics in the US is lagging behind Japan and South Korea but he can catch up.
By IsoTek at 11:49 PM ON 12/27/07
I think advances in robotics are moving along pretty well. The US seems to place more value in practical applications such as defense or utility robotics where as the Japanese seem to need not just work robots but are striving for full fledged Androids. Kinda frivolous if you ask me. The quip about this robot replacing our children kind of chilled me. I remember seeing Z.P.G. and the robot children the future denizens of the movie had to settle for instead of flesh and blood organic children. Now that the US is actually having more kids to offset the baby boomers I don't see the joy in cuddling a robot child.
By Roboman at 12:07 PM ON 12/29/07
Why would a full fledged Android be frivolous? I also would not base any of my robot opinions on a really bad 1972 movie!
By Roboman at 4:39 PM ON 12/29/07
Why would a full fledged Android be frivolous? I also would not base any of my robot opinions on a really bad 1972 movie!
By IsoTek at 4:56 AM ON 01/03/08
Frivolous in the sense that they (those that have some need or desire for them) see them as machine companions. The natural evolution of the robot should be dictated by function not form. This is one thing that has always disturbed me about Japan and its love of robots, they have a fetish for the machine to the point of humanizing it. I say nay to that, we need robots as tools that we can utilize without the emotional trappings that one would assign to a companion type robot. And my opinons are based on just that....not the bad 1972 movie.
By Roboman at 12:38 AM ON 01/05/08
First what is natural about the evolution of robots? I think that function dictates that the best robots will mimic human form. Not only to make good tools but so that people will be comfortable around them. I think that you are going a little overboard on what you call a Japanese fetish for robots. It is obvious that US movies have given you a misplaced distrust of robots. Humans assign emotional trapping or humanize things that they own whether they look human or not. Good examples are pets, work tools, cars, clothes, houses the list is endless. I think that you have a misplaced mistrust of robots. If you reexamine your opinion you will realize that it is based on fear of the unknown not on any logical facts.
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Roboman:
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