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Product of the Week: Robovie-MS (Week 45)
Posted on Nov 07, 2004 - 07:33 PM by zmcnulty
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Topic: Other
Category: Product of the Week
Technorati: Linking Blogs

As per request, I've moved the Product of the Week feature from the forums to the main page. This will give it better exposure (as our RSS readers will now be able to see the feature), and allow for easier commenting.

So, comment away, or I'll be a sad panda.

Product Name
Robovie-MS

Product Image(s)

Product Code
Robovie-MS

Vendor
Vstone

Release Date
Available now

Price
99,750 yen

Overview
The Robovie-MS is one of the world's first robots to be available for under 100,000 yen ($948 USD). It stands about 280cm tall, is about 185cm wide, and has a 50cm depth. But these measurements are when it is in "human" form, as pictured above; one of the primary strength of the robot is that it how be reassembled into different configurations. Other sample configurations include a 4-legged robot, and even a robotic arm. Featuring 5 degrees of freedom on the arms and 3 degees of freedom on the legs, as well as one on the neck, it also contains a dual-axis G sensor and joint bend sensor. While the 16MHz computer and 32KB FLASH-ROM don't exactly give you the greatest amount of flexibility, you'll probably find the 20 minute operation period suitable. As you may have guessed by the price tag and structure of the robot, it is intended for use in educational settings -- the robot's creator, the Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories, bills it as suitable for elementary school kids and up.

Reasoning
Like it or not, robots are on the horizon. As technology gets more and more advanced, more and more robots are being created; but they're not exactly cheap or useful quite yet. At under $1000, such a low-priced robot should help educate a lot children in the field. Personally, I feel somewhat depraived, as I never received any "robots" education. In fact, beyond the Legos I used to play with at home, I really missed the boat for robots.

Official Product Site
http://www.irc.atr.jp/robovie-ms.html

Related TechJapan Coverage
Vstone to sell low-price, humanoid ATR robots (November 3rd, 2004)

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Comments (must be registered to post)
MCCoy 09.11.04, 12:25	I can't imagine having this when I was in school. It had been always my dream. I really think things like these are very educative and boost up creativity, and helps children to know how the human body works (dealing with articulations, bones, and such), and electronics. And moreover, it's very fun! I still remember when we did a computer-controlled robotic arm in high school. But it was made from almost recycled parts: the engines for the bend and the rotating base were taken from cheap radiocontrolled cars, and the step-by-step one for the pincer was from a floppy disk driver, and so on. Whe did the controller card ourselves, with diodes and transistors and relays. Apart from that, I did the controller program for the PC, it was basically low-level dealing with the LPT port, where the homemade controller card was connected, but I even did an on-screen 3D real-time representation of the arm with statistics and all that! It was quite nice. But we were 16 years old back then. For smaller children, it would be better something like this, with pre-made parts for combining, and the help of a teacher for programming the chip. Or maybe if there's some software simillar to Lego Mindstorm's one, very easy to program... even the kids would be able to do it. But I don't know if this will ever get to schools, becuase usually teachers doesn't really know how to deal with this things...
struppi 09.11.04, 13:31	I second the teacher emphasis part. I took a robotics class in college. During the entire semester, we 'played' with the robot (an r2d2 looking thing that was programmed in LOGO) only a couple of times. In the other classes, we learned pretty much close to nothing (or at least my memory tells me). You guessed it, sucky school, and a sucky teacher. I vaguely remember getting my hands on the robot for more than 5 minutes. I guess the robot didn't help with respect to programmability. It was so rudimentary, it didn't give me a zeal to stuff it with AI; probably because I'd gain more satisfaction simulating the robot on a PC. It was like, too 'hardcoded' toward supporting its LOGO implementation. So, wrt robots in classrooms - make'em programmable from the bottom up. Make students want to install a Linux kernel on one, even if it just sits there! And add an encouraging teacher, and maybe, just maybe one day, we'll have a Robot Programmer Wannabe generation on our hands.
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