

Domestic robots failed to ride to rescue after No. 1 plant blew - bane
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120106f1.html#.TwoaQ0gmuhM.reddit

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algoshift
Asimo is a marketing toy. It wouldn't be able to navigate through a child's
playroom, much less an environment full of hazards. The walking technology
they are using is exactly one hundred percent wrong for anything "real world".

Looks great though.

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nodata
Asimo can even have problems with pre-defined stairs:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTlV0Y5yAww>

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rbanffy
Please, make the title show it refers to Japanese, not home, robots. People at
GMT+3 and higher will wake up soon and most won't be able to figure it out
before the first cup of coffee kicks in. Many will think of Roomba's rescuing
injured people. ;-)

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jacques_chester
The short answer is: radiation.

Military robots are hardened. Civilian robots are not.

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patio11
There's also some major confusion between bipedal bots, which are almost
exclusively toys for PR consumption / blue sky research, and Japan's (true,
demonstrable) edge in robots which actually do useful stuff ever. (The
overwhelming majority are in factories, and they're about as sexy as ERP
systems. These are not all that useful for novel tasks in arbitrary
environments for the same reason that screwdrivers make poor dental
instruments.)

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mturmon
I agree with the spirit of your comment, but it's true that legged robots are
becoming a reality, and showing their usefulness in real-world locomotion
tasks. See:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL0aiQAm4RU>

This hexapod uses more energy to get from A to B, about 2x more IIRC, but it's
able to clear some rock fields, sand, and brush that would give wheeled or
tracked robots trouble.

