Hitachi Unveils a Robot that Acts Drunk
The Associated Press' Yuri Kageyama reports that hitachi this week unveiled its new EMIEW 2 robot, only to have it "crash into a desk and demonstrate the challenge of turning automatons into everyday helpers…"
According to Kageyama, the robot's wireless control system was the cause of the problem. "The red and white robot, designed to run errands in offices, wasn't prepared for the jam of lunch-break wireless network traffic at the company's research center," he writes.
"Unable to communicate with its handler's laptop, it smashed into the office furniture as reporters gasped."
Or, as Gizmodo's Addy Dugdale puts it, "what was meant to be a showcase in up-to-the-minute robot fabulousness turned into a ZOMG-I-think-it's-drunk moment…"
More here from AFP … more here from Engadget … more here from Pink Tentacle … more here from The Inquirer … and more here from Xinhua.
Yuri Kageyama said:
Nov 23, 07 at 9:27 pmThanks for your interest in my article. Some readers were asking why the wireless/network would get jammed. The robot is a Hitachi robot being demonstrated at a Hitachi facility. And so the workers (who are working in sections other than the robot section) are all logging on and accessing the intranetwork server to look at email, surf the Net, etc. The problem was that the engineers had never tested the robot during lunchtime. In many Japanese companies, people often take breaks en masse. They weren’t sure if the problem was wireless related or Network related, or both, but they said it was because there was too much traffic.
http://yuri-kageyama.blogspot.com