(via boingboing)
All geeky readers here, please raise your hands. Now, those of you with raised hands, keep them up if you’d like your own bipedal robot. Good. So, everyone who put their hands down – you can leave now – you’re not sufficiently geeky to be here. I deal with only high-level geeks, thank you very much. Those of you still here, check out the new Robo-One bipedal humanoid robot.
ROBO-ONE type bipedal humanoid robots were first introduced a little over four years ago. Almost all of the current designs have at least 16 or more servo motors, advanced controller boards, and fairly involved kinematics. That’s fine for the real devoted (maniac) robot fans, but as the robots have gotten more and more complex they have become way too difficult for the novice fans to master.
. . .
At the same time, Iwaki-san, the head of the Robot Force organization and a dedicated robot builder and competitor himself, believes that in order for number of robot players to increase dramatically, it must be FUN. Believe me, the Robo-Fight and Robo-Gong events are more fun than the proverbial barrel of monkeys, as we know from personal experience.
With that in mind, Robot Force set some basic design criteria for a low end, simple robot kit. In order to be considered a ‘humanoid robot’, their new robot would have to:
- Have two legs and arms
- Be able to walk around
- Swing its arms to punch and fight
- Get up from the ring mat either from a prone position or from its back
In addition, it had to:
- Be easy for the customer to understand, build, program and operate
- Have a low parts count with a minimal number of servos, since they are the most expensive single component in any humanoid robot design
- Be low cost enough so that a large number of customers could afford it
- Be a lot of FUN!
There you have it. Fun, easy to make, inexpensive, blah, blah, blah. What matters is this is a 3 servo robot that is designed to be more accessible than previous generation robots. And apparently, usable in robo-fights!!! Who doesn’t love a good robo-fight?
[tags]Robots, Robo-Fights[/tags]