Intel Offering 3-D Printed Robot Kits 26
jfruh writes Intel is developing a series of robot kits for hobbyists, ranging from "Jimmy", a $1,500 "social robot," to a more robust $16,000 model. The robots are powered by Intel x86 chips, are programmable, and can have exoskeletons parts produced at home by 3-D printers. From the article: "The two-legged Jimmy will be one in a line of robots that Intel hopes do-it-yourself enthusiasts will embrace, developing more functionality for the robots, which will be able to handle tasks such as turning on lights, picking up newspapers and even having conversations, researchers said at the Intel Future Showcase 2014 in New York City Tuesday. Intel and its robotics partners will sell kits with servo motors, batteries, boards, a frame and other internal parts. Using 3D printers, users can create robot designs and place them on the exoskeleton."
Software not hardware (Score:2)
Robots are more about software than hardware. Though having smart hardware looks and feels good. Intel's success would be dependent on doing a good job on the software and making is user friendly.
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well they leave it up to the user.
the article is pretty much 98% shit. no pictures either. thanks for nothing it world.
the 15k model has core i5 and the 1.5k model has edison chip(sd card sized soc board thingy). the 1.5k model has legs. everything else in the article is just gravy about how future will change bla bla bla.
AMAZINGLY bad management at Intel (Score:2)
1) Announcing something when it is far from finished.
2) Producing "consumer" items no one wants.
Examples:
2001: Intel closing consumer electronics unit [geek.com]
2011: Intel drops smart TV to focus on smartphones, tablets and thin laptops [venturebeat.com]
Some experiences:
In 2012, I was visiting an Intel web page. A pop-up asked me to take a survey. I said yes. I mentioned several management problems at Intel. I said that the problems at Intel started at the top.
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Re:Software not hardware (Score:4, Informative)
Are you familiar with ROS, http://www.ros.org/ [ros.org] ? It's basically a set of libraries for various robotics tasks and sounds like what you're describing.
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I can see headlines from the future! (Score:5, Funny)
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Jimmy's gonna have a compound fracture.
Like the Nao robot (Score:4, Insightful)
These seem similar to the Nao [aldebaran.com], which is a line of small humanoid robots from France. About the same price point.
What you can do with them depends strongly on the sensors. If the joints are position-controlled only, and you don't have force feedback, locomotion and manipulation will be clunky. There are some simple robot components, such as 6 degree of freedom force sensors for wrists and ankles, which are insanely expensive today, because they're made by hand for research and industrial purposes.
If you have all that sensing, plus three axes of accelerometer and three axes of rate gyro, you should be able to get Boston Dynamics type agility out of the thing. If the DARPA Humanoid Challenge produces some usable open-source software, it should be possible to move that down to toy-sized robots.
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I should pay for [...] the same shit they design once and resell multiple times
You mean like pretty much every company that makes anything in the entire world?
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Come on. That's not true.
Why every computer company on earth only sells one unit of their latest designs and then gives away the rest for free.
At those prices? (Score:2)
How exactly is 1500-15000 worth of equipment 'hobbyists'? And that's on top of the money you've already spent on getting a 3d printer.
Then again, if you've got the disposable income to buy a 3d printer, just for fun, then I suppose these kits are equally cheap.
What would be nice would be if they could come up with *cheap* robots of this calibre. Like, a robotic version of the raspberry pi. That way those of us who arn't rich can still enjoy them and learn about more advanced robotics than a 3 wheeled soup
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Have you looked at how much robotics parts cost? A cheap servo is $12, an acceptable servo costs $45, and good servos you might use with surgical precision start at $95. High torque high precision motors a human sized model start in the $450 range and go up from there.
Six range of motion arms (let alone three digits per finger) means 12 servos for just the arms. It's no wonder people are looking at pneumatics, hydraulics etc for high torque high precision "digitla muscles". Robotics is expensive. An
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Lots of hobbies can demand that much. Some hobbies have a wide range of spending (e.g., golf, electronics, computers) from practically free to many thousands, others demand huge upfront costs (e.g., flying, boating, etc).
Just because it's a hobby doesn't mean people can't spend outrageous amounts of money on it. I mean, people can spend $13K on an oscilloscope for their hobby
They'd sell a lot more robots, if.... (Score:2)
They'd sell a lot more robots, if they looked like beautiful girls. Where is chobits technology already?