Toyota Reveals A Humanoid Robot That Can Run 216
Peter writes "Toyota researchers have unveiled a new humanoid robot that can run at 7 km/h, which is faster than Honda's humanoid robot ASIMO. Toyota's robot can also keep itself balanced when pushed, as shown in the video."
OMG?! How much is that in miles?! (Score:2, Funny)
I'm American! I have no idea if that is fast or not! Someone help me, do I need to be afraid or can I outrun it? Even if it's slow, I probably can't outrun it.
Re:Fast walk? (not run?) (Score:4, Funny)
It looks to me like their is something below the foot that makes contact before the white part of the foot makes contact. From the high speed camera, it looks like this make contact on the front foot before the back foot leaves the ground. I thought to be running, both feet need to be in the air at once. Otherwise you were walking. Maybe I am just seeing the video wrong? Regardless, it looks very impressive.
If you watch closely around :53 you can see that both feet are not touching the ground. But really, when you're being pursued by a hyper-ambulatory Asimo, my mind's on survival, not robo-locomotive kinematics!
Re:Yes, but... (Score:3, Funny)
...does it run linux?
No, it just runs. In Soviet Russia, Linux-running overlord, for one, welcomes you?
Re:OMG?! How much is that in miles?! (Score:2, Funny)
No, 7 Km/h means only about 2050m/h in *room temperature*. That's just 1.27 miles per hour.
Forget Skynet and Terminators (Score:5, Funny)
Once the robots have eliminated all their human creators, the world-wide war will be Honda vs Toyota.
Sadly, the goal of the war will be to eliminate all commercial competition for the car divisions of Honda and Toyota but there will be no humans left to buy them.
And like a house of cards, it's going to be checkmate right in the bullseye.
Re:Forget Skynet and Terminators (Score:3, Funny)
The humanoid robots will drive cars, they can only run at 4 miles per hour!
Run, ASIMO, run! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One step closer to robot world domination (Score:5, Funny)
Not necessarily, it could also be seen as, the USA (and others) are creating robots that are already against us, whereas Japan (and others) are creating ones that will eventually turn against us.
What better way to do? Get one of these helper bots in every home, on every street corner, flip the switch and they all take over without any loss of (your, the conquering) lives. Not that I'm saying that's what they are doing, but simply because these appear benign, doesn't necessarily mean that's the ultimate goal, although I do like to think they are to remain harmless, "here to do good thing" robots, as the Japanese have generally always done with them, from Karakuri Ningyo's [wikipedia.org] brining tea, to these.
Re:OMG?! How much is that in miles?! (Score:5, Funny)
> I need to be afraid or can I outrun it?
No, because you are an American.
A single 357 magnum round to just about any part of this thing will have it crashing to the ground. These things are way more fragile than a biker on PCP.
Re:First learn how humans do it (Score:2, Funny)
> Just as babies can't start running from the get-go,
So they had you at "humanoid" I see.
Re:First learn how humans do it (Score:3, Funny)
If you had as few degrees of joint freedom as this robot, you wouldn't look too graceful and efficient either...
Re:Fast walk? (not run?) (Score:5, Funny)