Sony Global | Press Release Sony Develops Small Biped Entertainment Robot
With Ability to Adopt Its Movement to a Variety of Situations and Offering Rich Communication.
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Author Archives: Ogen
Ananova – Sony unveils singing, dancing robot
© AFX News
Story filed: 11:19 Tuesday 19th March 2002
Sony Corp said it has developed a robot which walks, sings and dances, and can recognise images and sounds.
SDR-4X is a 60 centimeter-high entertainment robot with arms, legs and a head. It is still in its development stages but can already communicate with people using special sensors, Sony said.
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Cameras built into the robot’s head enable it to recognise people, and it can also understand some speech.
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Sony hopes to market the SDR-4X in Japan, but has yet to set a launch date.
Sony robot sings, dances and isn’t cheap
Sony’s SDR-4X can remember people’s faces and even dance disco, but it’s an expensive toy — costing as much as a luxury car.
TOKYO, Japan (AP) — The newest Sony Corp. family member has a photographic memory, an extensive vocabulary and a jukebox-like knowledge of music.
He also comes with a clunky, sci-fi name and a price tag resembling that of a luxury car.
The silver, round-eyed “SDR-4X” humanoid robot was unveiled Tuesday and will go on sale later this year. Sony Corp. would not say much more about its plans for the 23-inch tall robot.
“This robot was designed to live with people in homes,” said Toshitada Doi, Sony executive vice president.
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The SDR-4X is an upgraded version of a humanoid robot shown about a year ago. It has two cameras to see things better, including being able to tell the difference between the edge of a table and the patterns on the floor. That has been a challenge for another Sony product, the puppy-shaped robot Aibo, which has only one camera.
The new robot will be considerably more expensive than Aibo, which already has sold more than 100,000 units worldwide. The latest Aibo model sells for $1,400 in Japan and $1,500 in the United States.
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Sony, Honda animated on robots’ role – Tech News – CNET.com
By Reuters
March 19, 2002, 4:55 AM PT
It’s a question anyone might ask about a potential live-in partner. Should your household robot be cool? Or practical?
For consumer electronics giant Sony, which on Tuesday unveiled the sleek and diminutive SDR-4X that can sing in vibrato and dance with fluid or funky motions, robots ought to be entertaining. But for automaker Honda Motor, which showed off the latest version of its Asimo robot at a Tuesday luncheon with foreign reporters, such machines should one day perform useful tasks for their human masters.
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ROBODEX2002 | News ROBODEX2002 Schedule
REMINDER – The ROBODEX Executive Committee formally announced today that ROBODEX 2002 will be held. This will be an exposition of robots as partners for human beings?personal robots that embody state-of-the art robotics. The Expo will be held March 28 to March 31 (Thursday to Sunday) in 2002, at Pacifico Yokohama Exhibition Hall in Yokohama Minatomirai area.
ZZZ online | Number 120
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Troody is (or was, I guess) a two-legged robotic replica of a Troodon dinosaur from the Cretaceous period, checking in at a hieght of 45 cm (about 18 inches – the robot not the dino) at the hips when standing , about 1.3 meters (about 4 feet) from tip of snout to end of tail, sporting over fourteen servo motors (with 16 degrees (axis) of freedom of motion) and a gyroscope, loaded with a TMS320c30 DSP (for CPU, I honestly don’t know what this is – perhaps someone can enlighten me in the discussion board) some DRAM and flash memory (for use when the device is untethered) and powered by NiMh 24v metal halide batteries (good for 30 minutes worth of charge- they decided against hydraulics so this baby is all electric), with everything together checking in at just about 4.5kg ( 10lbs). The robot can operate stand-alone (autonomous operation, guided by on board sensor input, and special “walking” algorithms), by joystick remote control, or by a host computer via a serial line.
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NASA :: The Personnal Satellite Assistant (PSA)
The Personal Satellite Assistant (PSA) is a robotic assistant for astronauts working in space. The PSA is about the size of a softball and has sensors for measuring gases, temperature, and air pressure. Also, the PSA is able to perform video conferencing and can communicate with electronic support devices such as computer servers, avionics systems, and wireless LAN bridges.
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vnunet.com Pentagon in search for robot GIs
By Nick Farrell [07-03-2002]
Exterminate!
The US Army is on the hunt for a private contractor to build war droids. Dubbed ‘Future Combat Systems’, the robots will be used to deploy sophisticated weapons in war zones to limit human casualties.
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No Robots in Robot Bar
By Steve Kettmann
2:00 a.m. March 7, 2002 PST
BERLIN — A tiny automated bar in Berlin’s hip Mitte District has attracted attention far and wide, thanks to an Internet posting this month urging people “(to) visit the Automaten Bar to have a drink served by a robot.”
One small problem: As cutting-edge as the lounge is, patrons will work up quite a thirst if they wait to be served by a robot.
“We all laughed at that,” said Torsten Oetken, one of nine organizers. “There are no robots.”
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