Robot built from a Mini Cooper?
Frank McHugh
Shawn Brown
Robocop. Someone clearly has way too much free time on their hands. ;-)
--
Shawn
"Frank McHugh" <mchu...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:14f6fe8.04030...@posting.google.com...
Chris S.
if you watch some of the videos, particularly bat_test.mpg you can
clearly tell its CG. I'm willing to give elderly British scientists a
lot of credit for a lot of things, but some of the capabilities
presented here seem a little too far-fetched to have been accomplished
by a lone researcher.
FLVIDEO
Scott McDonnell
the small resolution of the video probably hides ALOT. The car stopping
video is quite impressive, specifically. Almost enough to make you wonder.
Whoever made this has some talent. I say they get hired to do a CGI
transformers movie. Yeah, it does have that 'Robocop' feel, but what's wrong
with that? : ) Those were the good ole' days. I just wish ED-209 was the
main character. I like the mecha look better than the cyborg look.
Scott McDonnell
Long Live ED-209
"Shawn Brown" <shawn...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:104srdc...@corp.supernews.com...
Earl Bollinger
Good special effects though.
"Scott McDonnell" <devi...@NOSPAMexcite.com> wrote in message
news:YmQ3c.722$ft4.11572@attbi_s54...
Scott McDonnell
videos are. Oh well, I like to dream, therefore I say it is real!! :)
Scott
"Earl Bollinger" <earlwbo...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:e9WdnUf6HNa...@comcast.com...
Chris S.
have some serious doubts. Here's the response I got from Colin Mayhew,
the robot's inventor:
Colin Mayhew wrote:
>I can assure you that the Cooper project is a real and
>very tangible one. Your suspicion is perhaps
>understandable because the leaps we've made are rather
>significant compared to the current state of
>commercial AI. As Mr. Clarke wrote in Technology and
>the Future, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is
>indistinguishable from magic." What's important to
>remember in this famous quotation is not that the
>technology becomes magic, but rather that technology
>seems magical only to those who don't understand the
>details or are not knowledgeable of the history of a
>technology's development. It's for that reason that
>I've placed notes online and have included videos from
>different stages of the project. Have you seen videos
>of people interacting with the Kismet robot? That
>robot uses a fairly simple emotional model, yet people
>bond to it and treat it as a 'living' creature! It has
>become something magical from bits of aluminum and
>electrons whizzing inside silicon. Your experiences in
>the research sector I'm sure have shown you how
>disconnected the public can be from the realities of
>technology. There are autonomous machines (be they in
>medicine or oil well drilling) so removed from our
>daily lives that when we finally learn of them, we are
>shocked and amazed---far more so than had we followed
>the gradual steps and wrong turns the engineers made
>developing and finessing the technology. This project
>is real, and it, and the systems I've developed for it
>are going to change the way we live our lives. The
>most recent software revision I've tested on the robot
>has some powerful reasoning capabilities, a large step
>more powerful and versatile than that employed on the
>robot when I recorded the videos you may have seen
>online. They are perhaps powerful enough to seem like
>magic, but both devil and the angel of creativity are
>in the details. Soon enough, these little creatures
>will be animating the robots all around us and making
>our lives safer and more fulfilling.
>
>Regards,
>Colin
>
>
> --- "Chris S." <chr...@UDel.Edu> wrote: > Is your
>Mini Cooper powered robotic biped a real
>
>>project? Your site
>>seems detailed enough, but the videos look
>>suspiciously like computer
>>generations. Either way, it's an entertaining feat.
>>
>>Sincerely,
>>Chris S.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>___________________________________________________________
>Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping"
>your friends today! Download Messenger Now
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Ben Bradley
wrote:
>I have to say that I think the animations are pretty incredible. Of course,
>the small resolution of the video probably hides ALOT. The car stopping
>video is quite impressive, specifically. Almost enough to make you wonder.
I would have thought since the 'thing' stopping the car has its
'feet' on the ground on the left side of the car, that it would turn
the car to the left as it stopped it, at least a little bit. But the
car is still pointed in the exact same direction (as far as my eye can
see) after it has stopped as before the robot made contact. This
appears to be a simple bit of physics they didn't think to include as
part of the motion in the video, otherwise it is rather convincing.
Looking at it yet again, you can see the reflection in the center
back window go up as the back of the vehicle goes down the moment it
comes to a compete stop, indicating that it was the brakes stopping
the vehicle.
Save that video, see if there's an 'updated' version later that has
these defects fixed...
>Whoever made this has some talent. I say they get hired to do a CGI
>transformers movie. Yeah, it does have that 'Robocop' feel, but what's wrong
>with that? : ) Those were the good ole' days. I just wish ED-209 was the
>main character. I like the mecha look better than the cyborg look.
>
>Scott McDonnell
>Long Live ED-209
>
>
>
>"Shawn Brown" <shawn...@charter.net> wrote in message
>news:104srdc...@corp.supernews.com...
>> LOL...I like the jump start video. It reminds me of the cheesy animation
>in
>> Robocop. Someone clearly has way too much free time on their hands. ;-)
>>
>> --
>> Shawn
>>
>> "Frank McHugh" <mchu...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:14f6fe8.04030...@posting.google.com...
>> > Is this for real?
>> >
>> > http://www.r50rd.co.uk/research/internal/v2i/engin/
>>
>>
>
Ben Bradley
>I'm not so sure. I really want to believe this thing's for real, but I
>have some serious doubts. Here's the response I got from Colin Mayhew,
>the robot's inventor:
>
>Colin Mayhew wrote:
>
> >I can assure you that the Cooper project is a real and
> >very tangible one.
So he claims it's real.
> >Your suspicion is perhaps
> >understandable because the leaps we've made are rather
> >significant compared to the current state of
> >commercial AI.
There's that too (though I'm not that familiar with "state of the
art" robotics), but my reason for thinking it's not real (see below,
and I spell it out in my other message) is unrelated to how advanced
it appears to be. I see a man behind a curtain to whom I've been
instructed to pay no attention...
> >As Mr. Clarke wrote in Technology and
> >the Future, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is
> >indistinguishable from magic." What's important to
> >remember in this famous quotation is not that the
> >technology becomes magic, but rather that technology
> >seems magical only to those who don't understand the
> >details or are not knowledgeable of the history of a
> >technology's development. It's for that reason that
> >I've placed notes online and have included videos from
> >different stages of the project. Have you seen videos
> >of people interacting with the Kismet robot? That
> >robot uses a fairly simple emotional model, yet people
> >bond to it and treat it as a 'living' creature!
This claim is certainly "plausible", many people typing at Joseph
Weizenbaum's simplistic computer program "Eliza" were convinced they
were talking with some Freud-type psychotherapist entity, even his
secretary who helped code it (documented in his book "Computer Power
and Human Reason" and elsewhere). But people being convinced by such
simple models has no bearing on whether he's made a robot with
impressive capabilities, or just generated computer-animation videos
of such a robot.
> It has
> >become something magical from bits of aluminum and
> >electrons whizzing inside silicon. Your experiences in
> >the research sector I'm sure have shown you how
> >disconnected the public can be from the realities of
> >technology. There are autonomous machines (be they in
> >medicine or oil well drilling) so removed from our
> >daily lives that when we finally learn of them, we are
> >shocked and amazed---far more so than had we followed
> >the gradual steps and wrong turns the engineers made
> >developing and finessing the technology.
Again, true but irrelevant.
> > This project
> >is real,
He claims it again. But that's only his word, he hasn't said
anything or given any evidence to lead me to believe it's real,
especially after I picked apart that video.
> >and it, and the systems I've developed for it
> >are going to change the way we live our lives. The
> >most recent software revision I've tested on the robot
> >has some powerful reasoning capabilities, a large step
> >more powerful and versatile than that employed on the
> >robot when I recorded the videos you may have seen
> >online. They are perhaps powerful enough to seem like
> >magic, but both devil and the angel of creativity are
> >in the details. Soon enough, these little creatures
> >will be animating the robots all around us and making
> >our lives safer and more fulfilling.
One can only hope these things happen, whether he does it or
someone else, but as one might tell from my other message on the
stop-test video, I have "substantial doubt" that the videos are what
they appear to be. Actually, I have very little doubt the car-stop
test is fake, and I'm far from an expert on video, computer animation
and such. If I can pick it apart, surely others can do more.
And so I wonder why he's doing this. Perhaps to get investment
money? Prestige?
Is he the Pons and Fleischmann of robotics?
> >Regards,
> >Colin
> >
> >
> > --- "Chris S." <chr...@UDel.Edu> wrote: > Is your
> >Mini Cooper powered robotic biped a real
> >
> >>project? Your site
> >>seems detailed enough, but the videos look
> >>suspiciously like computer
> >>generations. Either way, it's an entertaining feat.
> >>
> >>Sincerely,
> >>Chris S.
SEIBERTRON
I'm going to add my 2 cents to all of this talk. Hasbro and Takara,
the makers of the Transformers toys, have a toy line currently of
officially licensed products from Manufacturers around the world. The
premise is that the Transformers crash landed (again) on Earth, and
that the worlds' auto-manufacturers have decided to team up to build
the Transformers new bodies with Earthen technology. The automakers
who have signed on so far have all taken this property very seriously,
to my surprise.
So far the following manufacturers have signed on for the Transformers
Alternators toy line:
* Jeep
* Dodge
* Subaru
* Chevrolet
* Mazda
and supposedly Ford has as well. There have been quite a few rumors
going around our Transformers fandom that BMW and the Mini-Cooper have
signed up as well, but there has been no official word ... until
today, with this possible connection which seems uncannily related to
the Transformers Alternators toy line.
Mazda US did quite a big promotion on their website for their upcoming
Transformers Alternators. Their promotion began on their website back
in January and I think it is still viewable:
http://www.mazdausa.com/MusaWeb/NA_Autoshow/
http://www.mazdausa.com/MusaWeb/NA_Autoshow/transform_big.html
Mazda was the first auto-maker to try to portray their Transformer as
a "real" product, but the realness is lost with animation. The
Mini-cooper's approach is much more plausible with a supposed research
website along with supposed "video", if this is indeed what I think it
is (the Mini-Cooper's marketing campaign for this licensing deal).
If this is indeed a Transformers Alternator (called Binaltech in
Japan), then the Mini-Cooper will most likely be used as a mold for
the Autobots Bumblebee and/or Cliffjumper. Bumblebee was originally a
Volkswagen Beetle and rumor has it that Volkswagen will not associate
their products with that of a warlike toy line or anything with guns,
which is something the Transformers are all about (ironic though,
since the original Beetle was commissed by Hitler I believe).
For more information about this product toy line, please keep me
informed at http://www.seibertron.com - the Internet's #1 Transformers
resource. Thanks!
- Seibertron (Ryan)
http://www.seibertron.com
Samir Kahn
It's certainly starting to seem "plausible" to me.
> Hello Samir,
>
> Though the logic of your critique is correct, the extrapolation to your
> conclusion is incorrect. The scaling laws show that there is *some* limit
> where a material is no longer suitable for certain uses (for example,
> silicon is stronger than steel at the micron level, but beyond that scale it
> is brittle), but that limit is scaled by the strength to weight ratio of the
> material in question. All you've said is that one can't build something
> arbitrarily large---and I agree---but you haven't told me why this limit is
> beyond the scale of the r50r. Obviously, the key for the r50r project was to
> keep the weight down and the strength up, and to this end, I was very
> judicious with my choice of materials and configurations. What you can not
> see in detail in the images online are the intricate honeycomb panels and
> baked composite members that were necessary to keep weight down.
>
> Have you considered that by your logic elephants cannot exist? That dinosaurs
> are the realm of science fiction? The Petrona Towers are merely Photoshop
> magic? Perhaps a few back of the envelope calculations or a trip to you local
> natural history museum may convince you otherwise.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Colin
>>Hi Colin,
>>
>>The robot you've put up on the web site is pretty wild! But I've got
to say
>>I'm a skeptic. It just doesn't hold up to the laws of scaling. It's
in first
>>year statistics that you learn that strength goes up with the cross
>>sectional area of a beam (or l^2) while the mass goes up with the
cube (l^3)
>>and that's what fundamentally limits the size of what we can build.
Were it
>>real, your robot would break from its own weight.
>>
>>Nice page though,
>>Samir Kahn
Doug Whittier
video.
The shadow cast by the bot is going in the opposite direction as the
shadow cast by the traffic cone on the right hand side.
It's the little things that get ya nowadays.
Ben Bradley
>What I find personally hilarious about this is watching the 'car stop'
>video.
>
>The shadow cast by the bot is going in the opposite direction as the
>shadow cast by the traffic cone on the right hand side.
Hmm. I now click on the "Phase 4" link which opened a page with a
link to this video as well as "Treadmill test" (which didn't and
doesn't now work), but the 'car stop' link no longer shows up. Why do
you suppose <ahem> he removed the link? Did anyone save a copy?
>It's the little things that get ya nowadays.
Chris S.
> Hmm. I now click on the "Phase 4" link which opened a page with a
> link to this video as well as "Treadmill test" (which didn't and
> doesn't now work), but the 'car stop' link no longer shows up. Why do
> you suppose <ahem> he removed the link? Did anyone save a copy?
My guess would be, it was the most incriminating. I actually had
downloaded all the videos at one point, but I erased them last week when
few people showed interest in the story. I don't have much space left on
my hard drive. However, I did setup a little page at
http://copland.udel.edu/~chrisks/links.htm to make downloading the
videos a little easier, for anyone who's interested.
Rotes Sapiens
wrote:
>What I find personally hilarious about this is watching the 'car stop'
>video.
>The shadow cast by the bot is going in the opposite direction as the
>shadow cast by the traffic cone on the right hand side.
If you look along the line from the robot shadow a window with
sunlight can clearly be seen in the video. The traffic cone shadow is
from light coming through the open door at the other end of the
building, or perhaps from electric lights. The light sources are
shining light in different directions, so the shadows are in different
directions. You have heard of multiple light sources?
Sig:
You know, a lot of things, in this world, they make no sense. But now Im here, everthing make no sense.
Rotes Sapiens
<ben_nospa...@mindspring.example.com> wrote:
>In comp.robotics.misc, dwhi...@shaw.ca (Doug Whittier) wrote:
>>What I find personally hilarious about this is watching the 'car stop'
>>video.
>>The shadow cast by the bot is going in the opposite direction as the
>>shadow cast by the traffic cone on the right hand side.
> Hmm. I now click on the "Phase 4" link which opened a page with a
>link to this video as well as "Treadmill test" (which didn't and
>doesn't now work), but the 'car stop' link no longer shows up. Why do
>you suppose <ahem> he removed the link? Did anyone save a copy?
I had no trouble d/l the mpg file from:
http://www.r50rd.co.uk/research/internal/v2i/engin/videos/stop_test.htm
Rotes Sapiens
<ben_nospa...@mindspring.example.com> wrote:
>In comp.robotics.misc, "Scott McDonnell" <devi...@NOSPAMexcite.com>
>wrote:
>>I have to say that I think the animations are pretty incredible. Of course,
>>the small resolution of the video probably hides ALOT. The car stopping
>>video is quite impressive, specifically. Almost enough to make you wonder.
> I would have thought since the 'thing' stopping the car has its
>'feet' on the ground on the left side of the car, that it would turn
>the car to the left as it stopped it, at least a little bit. But the
>car is still pointed in the exact same direction (as far as my eye can
>see) after it has stopped as before the robot made contact. This
>appears to be a simple bit of physics they didn't think to include as
>part of the motion in the video, otherwise it is rather convincing.
If you watch the robot's feet, you can see them moving. Instead of
the car turning, being pulled around the robot, the robot moves, being
pulled along with the car.
> Looking at it yet again, you can see the reflection in the center
>back window go up as the back of the vehicle goes down the moment it
>comes to a compete stop, indicating that it was the brakes stopping
>the vehicle.
The earlier model LandRover type cars featured in the video have flat
windscreens which flex and move about while driving. The windscreens
aren't curved and rigid like in a modern car. Anyone who has been in
a LandRover knows what I mean. In many ways the LandRover is the
equivalent of the old american Jeep.
> Save that video, see if there's an 'updated' version later that has
>these defects fixed...
It hasn't been changed yet...
>>Whoever made this has some talent. I say they get hired to do a CGI
>>transformers movie. Yeah, it does have that 'Robocop' feel, but what's wrong
>>with that? : ) Those were the good ole' days. I just wish ED-209 was the
>>main character. I like the mecha look better than the cyborg look.
RoboCop was made to seem like a robot, not the other way around |-)
>>Scott McDonnell
>>Long Live ED-209
The Kain robot in one of the later movies was good too. I also liked
the robot fighters in Matrix 3, although they were piloted.
>>"Shawn Brown" <shawn...@charter.net> wrote in message
>>news:104srdc...@corp.supernews.com...
>>> LOL...I like the jump start video. It reminds me of the cheesy animation
>>in
>>> Robocop. Someone clearly has way too much free time on their hands. ;-)
>>>
>>> --
>>> Shawn
>>>
>>> "Frank McHugh" <mchu...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>>> news:14f6fe8.04030...@posting.google.com...
>>> > Is this for real?
>>> >
>>> > http://www.r50rd.co.uk/research/internal/v2i/engin/
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>-----
>http://mindspring.com/~benbradley