Two-Legged Home Robot, Coming Soon To Japan

An anonymous reader submits "Two Japanese companies, (ZMP corp., and Mizuno, a athletic goods manufacturer), announced that they will start selling the first two-legged robot for home use. The robot, called nuvo, will retail for 500,000 yen. It wil be able to understand 1,000 (Japanese) words, dance, and allow the owner to contact the robot via 3G phones."

A toy?

[ObviousGuy]

I guess there's a market for this kind of thing in Japan. The mean age in Japan is approaching 70 and many of these older persons are living alone, so there are a lot of seniors that will require assistance with their daily life. A robot that can fetch medicine or notify the owner that it is time to take medicine or even notify the authorities if the owner doesn't move for more than a specified time.

More than just "wow, this is cool! Imagine a beowulf cluster of these", this robot is a significant step forward for the assisted-living technological front.

Re:A toy?

[mantera]

"...or even notify the authorities if the owner doesn't move for more than a specified time."
I totally love this one... I love you man, i'm ur fan from now on

Re:Translation (by me)...

[MooCows]

Actually this thing looks really well made.
If the voice-recognition in the vid is real, than that too is pretty sophisticated.

I only wonder how well it's pathfinding works (if there's any)
If it can't navigate a house there's not much use for it as assistance to a disabled person.

But for $4000, still an engineering achievement :)

Legs - why?

[Channard]

If this really is intended for home use, I'd question the value of legs. Granted, this is from the land that produced Battletech and assorted Mech shows, but we've already seen a robot that can climb stairs on wheels. Surely a wheeled robot would be infinitely more stable that this one. Come home drunk and walk into a wheeled 'bot and you've stubbed your toe a bit. Walk into a walking bot and you could knock it over, damaging and possibly breaking it.

Re:Legs - why?

[vranash]

Robotech dude, battletech was a cheap ripoff made by americans that just copied the mecha designs and eventually got their license revoked after using them in videogames without paying their royalties (or somesuch).

-- vranash

Ok, so you can talk at it

[Moderation abuser]

And it can wiggle.

That's it?

But can it do the dishes? Vacuum? Take out the rubbish? Press the TV channel change button?

Re:Bipedal robot is a bad move from design standpo

[JaredOfEuropa]

This is obviously a toy plain and simple, but you can't help wonder what kind of super maneveurable robot they could have created had they ploughed their efforts into something less pointless.

Well, maybe they are still working on it. A reasonably mobile bipedal robot that can get up by itself would be a nice advance towards a bipedal robot that can navigate more difficult terrain, such as stairs.

Once they get to that point, making robots bipedal will make sense... since these robots will then be able to go where we go. Heh, I always wondered how R2D2 managed to travel more than 3 meters over the sands of Tatooine... but C3PO just walked across.

Re:A toy?

[no longer myself]

What we need are some elder care trained dogs or monkeys.

Wow... That's sounds pretty bad too. What we need are compassionate loving families that stick together to take care of their own. I know it probably isn't ever going to happen, but when we abandon those who cared for us because it's inconvenient, what kind of justice do we deserve?

On a lighter note, I want my kids to buy me a robot to feed my trained monkey and walk the dog that fetches my prescriptions... And don't forget nurse Olga to give me a sponge bath every 2 hours.

Re:Ok, so you can talk at it

[mrogers]

OK it's just an expensive toy, but if somebody doesn't buy this robot they'll never build a better one. Remember cellular phones in the early 90s? Absurdly bulky, expensive and almost useless - who on earth bought them? Luckily for us there's an early adopter born every minute, so now we have tiny, cheap phones with batteries that last all week. Hopefully the same will be true of humanoid robots in ten years (except for the 'tiny' part - they'll have to be at least child-size to be able to cope with doors and stairs).

Re:Bipedal robot is a bad move from design standpo

[yotto]

If you want a truly sensible design, you would make a body plan with at least four legs, with the torso mounted in the exact center. Like a centaur, except with the human body shifted back to the middle of the horse's body instead of the front.

And then rebuild all cars to support this new shape, or my new robot isn't going to be driving me anywhere any time soon.