Toshiba Volleyball Robot From 1997
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Tuesday, 3 of November , 2009 at 1:02 am
Late nineties is fairly prehistoric when it comes to robots with fast reaction times. I mean, I was in high school in the late nineties! But while I was busy being a miserably outcast geek, Toshiba was demonstrating a robot that could (sort of) play volleyball. According to a Toshiba press release from back then, the robot was nicknamed “the beach-volleyball-playing robot” (seriously) and had multiple talents, including voice recognition and individual facial identification.
Toshiba’s press release also included a little bit of development background, where they discussed the present and future of robotics from a perspective that is now 12 years old:
“The 21st century will see robots not only programmed to act in certain ways, but able to respond to their environment, including working with and around people. Such robots will perform sophisticated tasks, including taking care of patients or executing complicated manufacturing processes, on the basis of simple instructions.
Currently, robots, and the objects they work on, must be precisely positioned, and robots require detailed programming to control their movements and actions. All this severely limits repertoire and usefulness.
Toshiba’s new robot demonstrates solution to these problems that will bring greater flexibility and capabilities to robots.”
Robots do still require fairly detailed programming to control their movements and actions, even as they’re getting much better at learning how to learn and make decisions for themselves. They’re also much better at responding to their environment, but working with and around people still hasn’t really come to pass. Toshiba seems to be working as hard as anyone to make all of this stuff work, though, with their series of (still mostly demonstrative) household assistance robots.
[ Toshiba Press Release ] VIA [ Neatorama ]
Comments (2)
Category: Research
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Comment by Robotbling
Made Tuesday, 3 of November , 2009 at 1:12 am
A longer video of the robot can be found at my website, for those who might be interested: http://www.plasticpals.com/?p=473
Comment by Joey1058
Made Tuesday, 3 of November , 2009 at 11:51 am
Left handed. That’s interesting. Almost all bots are either right handed, or ambidextrious.