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Japanese Robot Guards to Patrol Shops And Offices 188
Clarinase writes "Robots will be patrolling Japan's streets, offices, shopping malls and other public places for the safety of the people. Guardrobo D1 is equipped with a camera and sensors to detect any signs of trouble. It will then alert the human guards via radio with camera footage of possible troubles. This is one of the technological advancement vital to the aging population of Japan, where 1 in 5 Japanese are over 65 years old."
Who guards the robot? (Score:5, Funny)
Who cares about shoes?
GRAB THE ROBOT!
Re:Who guards the robot? (Score:2)
Re:Who guards the robot? (Score:2)
Maybe it was "Who protects the protectors?"
Or "Who surveils the surveilance?"
Or "Who overlords the robot overlords?"
Or something...
The Watchmen (Score:2)
Indeed! (Score:3, Funny)
Forboding.... (Score:3, Funny)
You know people will take it seriously (Score:5, Funny)
But does it have frickin' laser beams?
Re:You know people will take it seriously (Score:3, Funny)
But does it have frickin' laser beams?
more to the point, can we run linux on it?
Re:You know people will take it seriously (Score:5, Funny)
I sure as hell hope we can't run Windows on it.
"Hello, I am Guardrobo D1 anGET B1GGER WITH V1AGRA!"
Re:You know people will take it seriously (Score:1)
Re:You know people will take it seriously (Score:2, Funny)
more to the point, can we run linux on it?
Ok, now imagine a beowolf cluster of these......running linux.....with frikin' lasers!
Re:Well... (Score:3, Funny)
They wanted to use "Robocop", but realized the MPAA would probably send in their special forces.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You know people will take it seriously (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You know people will take it seriously (Score:4, Funny)
One time, my boss was seated at a desk with tables to each side of him when Rambo brushed into the back of his chair. It just stopped and locked its wheels. He was trapped until an operator saw the alert.
Re:You know people will take it seriously (Score:2)
Re:You know people will take it seriously (Score:2)
most likely made of gundanium.
you KNOW these programmers put the capability in there. they've been raised on anime ;-)
Re:You know people will take it seriously (Score:2)
(According to Terry Pratchett, admittedly not the most reliable of sources, they were called this because clothes were stored there so that the smell would keep away moths.)
Re:You know people will take it seriously (Score:2)
Perhaps it's a combination guard robot and gum remover? And safe as long as you keep your distance, but if you get too close it'll really steam you off.
Lets just hope... (Score:1)
Decent programming? (Score:5, Funny)
Shopper: Wtf?
[ED-209 blows shopper away.]
I'm sure that'd go over real well.
Re:Decent programming? (Score:1, Funny)
Er... (Score:3, Insightful)
A camera is a sensor. This should have been written as " Guardrobo D1 is equipped with a camera and other sensors."
Duh! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Er... (Score:2)
The camera could have just been for archival purposes.
In that case, the camera isn't a sensor, but everything else is.
Time for Robot Insurance (Score:5, Funny)
TfRI -- easy read format (Score:1)
Old Lady #2: They didn't have enough money for the funeral.
Old Lady #3: It's so hard nowadays, with all the gangs and rap music..
Old Lady #1: What about the robots?
Old Lady #4: Oh, they're everywhere!
Old Lady #1: I don't even know why the scientists make them.
Old Lady #2: Darren and I have a policy with Old Glory Insurance, in case we're attacked by robots.
Old Lady #1: An insurance policy with a robot
Re:Time for Robot Insurance - here's the video (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.robotcombat.com/oldglory1.html [robotcombat.com]
Old people in Japan (Score:1)
How come there are so many more old people in Japan as compared to the US? In the US, only ~12.5% of the population is 65 or over vs. Japan's 20%... Japanese people aren't that much longer lived than Americans, are they?
Re:Old people in Japan (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Old people in Japan (Score:1, Funny)
They eat their young.
KFG
Re:Old people in Japan (Score:2)
Continuing with corrections:
[...] immigration is slower in Japan so there are fewer foreigners upsetting the averages.
Anyhow. There was some pretty interesting info about this on PBS the other day.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/worldbalance/ [pbs.org]
Re:Old people in Japan (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Old people in Japan (Score:1)
I don't understand why people look down on people from Mexico so much.
Re:Old people in Japan (Score:1)
Re:Old people in Japan (Score:1)
Re:Old people in Japan (Score:2)
This doesn't really excuse anything, or explain it. It's more along the lines of "Sorry, some people are like that". If they're ashamed of being like that, they'll try not to let you see them. OTOH, if you get sensitized to that kind of reaction, you're likely to see it when it isn't there.
Some problems really DON'T have any easy answers. I didn't see the post as prejudiced...merely
Re:Old people in Japan (Score:1)
Re:Old people in Japan (Score:2, Funny)
I think the bigger question is: Why do they feel that they're going to need more security guards to protect possession/people from old people? Unless the robots are designed to sacrifice themselves to crazy old people driving through buildings I don't think they'd do any good.
Re:Old people in Japan (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Old people in Japan (Score:2)
if a robot falls over before killing old people and stealing their medicine, does anyone care?
Re:Old people in Japan (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Japan really really doesn't like allowing immigration.
2. There is still very old-fashioned treatment of women. This means that they underutilise 50% of their population. However, women in Japan are becoming more and more disastified with becoming a housewife and *want* careers. However, in Japan if you are a career woman and you have a baby, you are practically forced to quit. As one of my female Japanese co-workers (I work in Japan and am female) said to me recently "Back in your home country you mean women can have children and keep working?" In Japan women are quite literally forced to choose between having children and having a career. Having both is not possible. And many women choose career which further depresses the childbirth rate.
On another matter, if people think female participation in technology and scientific related fields is low in the US or Australia it's got nothing on Japan. Often we are the only females in the entire room/building. In fact my co-worker said this was the first time she had another female co-worker ever...
A weird thing in Japan right now which I see in the news is that apparently Japan has been discriminating against young people in jobs to maintain job security for "Baby boomers" (which is the reverse of the Western world). So young people have not been offered full-time positions. However now the baby boomers will be retiring starting in 2007 and employers are panicking because they havn't built up the structure of younger workers with the experience and know-how to step into the soon-to-be vacant positions.
Re:Old people in Japan (Score:5, Insightful)
Truly, I don't mean to be a troll, but there could be a good reason behind that. I see enough career moms and dads who need to fulfill an idiotic ideal and have children, leaving them to be raised by daycare and television. A few years down the line, they find the gall to piss and moan that their own children are like strangers to them and they can't relate or communicate.
Raising a child is a full-time job, contrary to what some people would like to think. Career parents seem to want all the advantages of the two situations without any of the responsibilities that go with them.
Granted, in a lot of cases it's not financially feasible to have at least one parent dedicated to child-rearing. If at all possible, I don't think these people should be having children in the first place.
Why start something you don't have the time or resources to see through?
Re:Old people in Japan (Score:2)
Re:Old people in Japan (Score:2)
Which should be the normal way of things, even if it may cost something or reduce productivity by a few percent (which however it doesn't, as parents lose less time to needless complexity).
In a traditional village society it is not the case that parenthood means that the parent wants to stop doing work for himself and the community, even if it was economically possible.
But in this case, the children naturally liv
Re:Old people in Japan (Score:2)
I work for NEC (in Japan), in software development, and there's about 60-40 male/female-ratio here (counting only "real" jobs such as software develop
Re:Old people in Japan (Score:2)
No, they're just the country with the highest life expectation in the world.
Re:Old people in Japan (Score:2)
Dude, calm down. It was a sarcastic joke... don't make a big fuss about it. I respect every country, but I don't think you can give so much weight to Andorra's and San Marino's population of 69,150, and 28,119, respectively. Secondly, Singapore matches Japan's by less than one year. Thirdly, it has long been known that Japan's life expecta
I wonder... (Score:2)
Hmmmm... Brain... Gone...
Time for Old Glory Insurance (Score:4, Funny)
I don't know (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I don't know (Score:2)
Re:I don't know (Score:2)
Pointless? (Score:2, Insightful)
So this undoubtably-expensive robot is a substitute for... multiple motion-sensing cameras? And a fire alarm?
What's the point in making it a robot? Why not just add the radio alert feature to the already-existing security systems and add a few more cameras?
Re:Pointless? (Score:2)
Re:Pointless? (Score:1)
Re:Pointless? (Score:2)
so that you become desensitised to it while it is performing benign duties.
Re:Pointless? (Score:2)
GitS (Score:3, Funny)
find the doctor (Score:1)
Competition? (Score:2)
Old people don't rob banks (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely if 1 in 5 Japanese are over 65 years old, there's going to be an equally proportional reduction in crime?
--
Toby
Japanese banks get robbed from within (Score:2, Interesting)
Old man #2: Matsuda-san, you need only ask; I am a loan officer in the developed world's most poorly regulated banking system!
Young people are just the ugly face of New Japan. The real crime here is grey.
Note: I don't hate Japan or Japanese. But there are some things I don't much care for--bovine complacency in the face of incompetence, and the "styles" the young folks are wearing.
But an equal decrease in sense of safety.. (Score:2)
When a population ages as a whole, it's insecurity feeling rises, even though the actual crimerate lowers.
That's probably why older people are more intent on voting on a conservative party that has "safety" and "security" as keywords. And ofcourse why people buy these products.
Not to say younger people are immune. I myself have bought 1 alarm system and 2 in-home camera systems in the last 3 years alone.
But I am happy to say I don't v
Re:Old people don't rob banks (Score:2)
Specious reasoning (Score:2)
From TA: "In the near future, it is certain that securing young and capable manpower will become even more difficult...and the security industry will feel the full brunt of the impact," the company said in a statement.
The unemployment rate in Japan is around 5% and has been rising [jei.org] for years now. Further, unemployment rates are usually highest among the youngest employable members of society. How can they claim that it is going to become harder and harder to find and employ human labor, in a country where
Re:Old people don't rob banks (Score:2)
Hmmm, robot's with cameras... (Score:1, Redundant)
Theif: [hmm, there's one dumb looking hunk of metal. It doesn't stand a chance]
Robot: [sensors detect approaching male, 180cm tall, 89.152 kilograms, wearing a 00FFFF colored jacket and FFFFFF colored pants, approaching at 3 m/s. going to alert 2]
[thief approaches store front]
Thief: [man, this dump hunk of junk isn't going to do anything. I think i'll just walk in quietly into the store, quietly, non-distubingly..
Robot:[male walking into store. hands in pocket, wearing backpack, tenis shoes. W
Protection? (Score:5, Funny)
*Thief notices $50 shoes.*
*Thief alterted by $10,000 robot.*
*Thief steals robot AND shoes.*
The need for Robots (Score:2)
Interestingly, US agriculture has moved away from mechanization in the last few years (and more and more to "Mexicanization") -- human labor is cheaper and ties up les
Re:The need for Robots (Score:2)
Re:The need for Robots (Score:2)
"The word robot comes from the Czech robota meaning "labor." Robot or robotnick were used in the 1600's to classify Czech tenant-farmers. A robotnick had to work as a minimum one month a year free for the landlord, according to Karsten Alnaes in his "European History II". "
The US has a robot-based economy, we're just using "robot" in the "traditional" sense, which is to say, indentured servitude. Just ask Taco Bell.
Nobody will notice... (Score:2, Interesting)
Mall Security (Score:3, Funny)
are they pink robots? (Score:2)
Re:are they pink robots? (Score:1)
Re:are they pink robots? (Score:2)
How is this better? (Score:3, Insightful)
Coolness aside, how is this better than blanketing the area with regular security cameras?
Re:How is this better? (Score:1)
Uhh, wrong answer?
Re:How is this better? (Score:2)
whatever that means. I guess old people like robots more than cameras.
Waste of time and tech (Score:1)
Sheesh.
Is 1 in 5 really that unusual? (Score:3, Interesting)
How does this compare with the rest of the world? (Especially reasonably well-off countries.)
If a population had an average life expectency of 81, which probably isn't too far off, and if people's ages were evenly distributed, then 1 in 5 people over 65 doesn't seem too unusual.
Well, people's ages aren't evenly distributed. Especially with the post-war baby boomers growing up, though, I would have thought that a lot of countries would either be in similar positions, perhaps even worse positions, or not far off it.
Re:Is 1 in 5 really that unusual? (Score:3, Informative)
The problem in Japan, however, isn't anywhere near as bad as it is in
even distribution impossible (Score:2)
EX-TER-MI-NATE (Score:3, Funny)
Cost-effective? (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean it's cool and all, but wouldn't just hooking the security cameras that we have now (at least in the US) up to the same trouble-spotting algorithm be much easier and cheaper and do the same thing?
Re:Cost-effective? (Score:2)
Didn't some Japanese company come out with robot attack dogs last year? This is a step or two up from that. And from the looks of the publicity photo, they intend to also have it do certain janitorial chores. (That sure looked like a built-in steam cleaning gu
Kinda funny, actually (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Kinda funny, actually (Score:1)
Three important words to remember... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Three important words to remember... (Score:2)
If you're going to quote something that famous, at least SPELL IT RIGHT.
"Clatoo, verata, Nicto."
Taken direct from the script online;
http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Army-of-Darkness.htm
Hmmm (Score:1)
Better then the alternative... (Score:2)
Numero uno con "cheese", grande Sprite....
OK, so not here exactly, 20 miles south of here where I lived for a while...
Re:Better than the alternative... (Score:1)
It's all backwards, my friends (Score:2)
That is just not the way it is at all. Robo tells the ne'erdowells,
"Come quietly, or there will be
That's no fun (Score:2)
Re:Berserk (Score:1)
Re: It shall be so number one. (Score:1)
Re:At last! (Score:1)
In soviet russia, you patrol for the robot police.
Re:At last! (Score:1)
You have the syntax wrong!
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Soviet_Russia [wikipedia.org]
for details, but it always ends in "YOU!" eg:
How do you feel about tabbed browsing?
In Soviet Russia, web browsers keep tabs on you!