Evolution Robotics' ER1 Reviewed 94
Anonymous Coward writes "A useful review of Evolution Robotics' ER-1 by the boys at Techfocus. It covers: construction, customization, hardware requirements, best features, programming, durability of equipment -- and all that good stuff.
One interesting factoid is that the robot can recognize objects until the object is blocked - up to 40% - by something (like a piece of furniture). Techfocus aptly points out the Orwellian implications... Another thing that rocked my world is the notion that the robot is not as much of a drag on CPU as one might suspect. TF ran the unit on an NEC Versa VXi running Windows 2000, with a 900mhz CPU and 128mb of RAM, and encountered absolutely no problems. Encouragingly, if you want to further customize your robot, why not just write a script in C or Perl -- the manual even points users toward an app primarily based in Linux.
What's not surprising: it's pricey. Also some nice pictures of how the robot really looks right out of the box."
Another robot (Score:4, Informative)
It uses a Palm Pilot [cmu.edu]
They had a demo at Fry's Electronics! (Score:3, Informative)
impressive, the robot itself isn't terrible fast, and you do have to have the laptop there, but the person demoing said they were working on something for PocketPCs, and other PDA's!
Re:Real world robots (Score:3, Informative)
Bed, Bath and Beyond (and you can't get a lot more consumer than that store) has the Roomba [bedbathandbeyond.com] for sale. I saw them at the San Francisco store a couple of weeks ago. With over 450 stores across the US, I'd say they are widely available, at least in the States.
CPU usage depends on tasks (Score:3, Informative)
The largest requirement for a robot able to recognize objects would be memory/storage. Kind of like those 20 questions programs, it is very simple processing to compare input with a matrix of possibilities. As the closest match in one matrix is found, it can now compare the input to the next matrix. The storage space for the matrices would be immense as the robot became more sophisticated, but higher processing power would simply speed up the time to "recognize" an object.
Re:Real world robots (Score:2, Informative)