Colin Mayhew, an engineer at a British division of BMW, decided to convert a mini cooper r50 into an autonomous biped robot. The results are quite impressive. In particular, check out this video. The no-frills design of the page makes it seem quite believable. But sleuths on Slashdot have determined that it's a hoax. The url is registered to an ad agency working for BMW. (via Things Magazine)
Comments
I hope you haven't used your real name 'cause the COMPUTERS and the ROBOTS are one and the same. They will find you and destroy YOU! I disconnect my Chevy's battery every night just to be sure it doesn't try anything FUNNY while I sleep!
Hootie (not MY real name)
false shadowing proves it animated. look on the november edition where he does the light test you'll see when he walks across the room his shadow does'nt seem to interact with the robot
simply: u should see part of his shadow on the robo's left leg when he made is way to the pwr button and good point some of u made if this was real would'nt there be hype about it and why pick a popular car to build it with?
Would you buy a Mini Cooper on the basis of this?
How much effort and money do you suppose went into it? One guy said you could "pick up" a robotic arm for $50,000. That's just the arm.
I don't for a minute believe the viral marketing story, just on a cost-benefit argument.
And the people going on about the shadows! I've seen expensive movies with worse CGI than this. This is EXCEPTIONALLY GOOD if it is a fake.
Notice the time taken on LIDAR and other stuff that most of us aren't interested in and has nothing to do with selling cars.
So, it's either an eccentric genius hoaxer, or an eccentric genius robotics guy called mayhew.
kind of a bummer, i wanted it to be real
No one in academic research, to my knowledge, has been successful with bi-pedal motion for human plus sized robots - it is very difficult to get their balance correct.
And for me to believe that not only one man, working alone, was able to solve this problem, but also, to create a robot that can stop the momentum of a car one handed while KEEPING its balance? I don't know. But its great science fiction!
YOU ARE RETARDED MORONS, INCAPABLE OF DISTINGUISHING FACT FROM FICTION.
If anyone was capable of making humanoid robots that could do that, they would be making it public. It would be splashed across websites and the newspapers.
You obviously have no idea of how complicated robots are. To make one that can drive around and follow things itself is extremely difficult. This is obviously fake.
And to the people who are worried that robots will get out of control and hurt someone, I strongly encourge you to shoot yourselves, as you have just identified yourself as the dumbest individuals on the planet.
And to the even dumber people who claim that it is real and that it was built to save people...
I've changed my mind.
YOU are now the dumbest people on the planet.
Go and do something painful to yourself.
And the person who said something aout God:
GOD DOES NOT CARE ABOUT OLD PEOPLE IN CARS! HE PROBABLY DOESN'T EVEN EXIST!
Thank you.
I still can't beleive you are so stupid.
http://www.miniusa.com/crm/robots/robot_configurator.jsp?model=coopers - 2k -
check it out.
My e-mail subsequently turned up on the web page of the ad agency that created it, complete with e-mail address and telephone number. Following that, a Japanese tv crew who were doing a documentary about robots actually called me, thinking that I somehow knew how to contact "Mr Mayhew" to give them access to the robot!
I called the ad agency, congratulated them yet again, and asked them to remove my contact details from the e-mail.
...
nah I made that all up. The robot's real. I bought one for my theme park to go with all the dinosaurs we have successfully bred from DNA extracted from prehistoric mosquitos.
Anyways you have to study the light, shadows and reflection attributes in the video.
http://www.zoicstudios.com/Web/Creations/Showcase.aspx?FileView=awards&ShowID=61&ShowType=Animation
Now I am not saying that robots of this caliber is not possible I am just saying you can't always believe what you see especially in film or video, because people like us are paid to fool you:)
for those still wanting to see this rather entertaining hoax, here is a way to see an archived copy.
for something much more real and just as entertaining though, check out web.archive.org and how they are archiving the whole net (more or less... they are the ones that archived the site and thats the link I gave), incredibly informative to those that know a bit about computer hardware and mass storage at the multiterabyte and beyond levels...
For those saying they know this hoax is real my advice is get a life, start learning real information. it's much more entertaining in the long term.
It is not real, I'm a CG and video composer artist and I have done more convincing stuff than that. Lighting setup, shadows, and reflections are well done however they are not perfect, there are many things such as reflection, shadow, motion blur, light tracing and depth of field imperfections.
It is posible to make it more reallistic, but clearly, the guys who did that video as well as me; had a deadline to finish the job.
And lastly; anyone who has a bit of mechanical or ingeniering knowledge would inmediately note how fantastic the joints of that robot are. There too many things missing; servos, pneumatic or hydraulic cilinders, etc., without those components the machine would move only with the help of magic. Plus, there are energy issues, as to power such machine, it'll have to be plugged to a power line permanently... infact the invention of such mobile power supply would be a more interesting new than the robot itself, since there many japanese humanoid transforming toys already in the market.
Regards,
Tenkken