Advee in Kosice

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi,

maybe you noticed my presence in the last 3 days was quite minimal - the reason is that I was on a trip with Advee and friend in Kosice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ko%C5%A1ice), city in Eastern Slovakia.

We were called 48hours before the event (http://www.setinair.com/), so everything was hectic with no time for big preparations, but it went quite fine (besides the fact a stuff worth 1000 EUR was stolen from our car, but that is another story :unguee:).

The conference had a strong focus on so called social robotics - which is branch of robotics focused on emotional feedback.

I liked the contribution of Italian team member, talking about iCub (http://www.icub.org/) robot. It has fully sensitive skin able to react to gentle touches for example. It is both software/hardware opensource, but the price of components is so high not many can afford it.

There were just 2 robots on the event physically - REEM (http://pal-robotics.com/robots/reem) by PAL Robotics from Spain and our precious partially ThinBASIC powered Advee (http://advee.eu/index-en.html) :)
Part of the program was ride through the old town, it was fun as can be seen from few pictures I attach.

I must admit I was a bit afraid that REEM will steal the show, because he has moving hands. But in practice, what Advee lacks in movement, he compensates with his hyperactive talking, so the interest was divided 50:50, which was nice.
I also appreciated the possibility to talk with the PAL guys in Spanish - it is already 8 years since the end of my studies and it started to be a bit rusty :)


Petr

[jack]

congratulations, that looks like a fun event.
about languages, I thought that once you learned a language you would never forget, but like you said, one does become 'rusty' if you don't practice for a long time.

[matthew]

Thanks for keeping us updated, I always wondered what had happened to Advee. :-) I feared that he may have been disassembled. :-(

[ErosOlmi]

Great Petr.
Very nice photo especially the one with Advee walking (where are the legs:) ) in the street with the Spanish one in background.

Regarding Italian robot, do not worry: many times we have great project but for many reasons we miss the force to go on.
Anyway prices are toooooooooo much high: the full robot is more than 200K €

[Michael Hartlef]

Cool pictures and I am sure it was an awesome time you had.

[Petr Schreiber]

about languages, I thought that once you learned a language you would never forget

For me, the problem is not the language as such, but the vocabulary - the memories for names of specific objects fade a way quite fast. I found watching spanish movies in original voice over a big help, but it is still not the same as talking to live person. Watching movies does not help you to recall the words from the brain on demand :)



I feared that he may have been disassembled. :-(

Advee is not afraid of being disassembled, he has to go through such a procedure before each transport. Cutting the head off is just the start :p.


(where are the legs:) )
Hehe, robot on legs would be great, but they pose lot of problems with stability. There are ways to stabilize robot:
http://youtu.be/cNZPRsrwumQ?t=34s
but the problem is he could kick someone while falling accidentaly, which would not be appreciated :)


Petr

[ReneMiner]

Just for the "legs" - at Reem one can see they try to make their autonomic moving computer look somewhat human - probably because of the "familiar looks" that every human being feels when watching a monkey. It might raise the basic confidence when monitoring a conversant humanoid shape - and also raise the empathy to forgive an error.
If I would have to create such thing - I would take insects, crabs or spiders as a template - perhaps a mixture of both - lower body insectoid/arachnoid - probably 7-legged just in case one breaks- upper body some touchscreen, a few pliers, pincers and antennas. Crabs seem interesting because they mostly move sideways - (they could have additional wheels/chains underneath also for faster movement on flat terrain and use their legs as "arms" then)
Legged "creatures" don't move smooth enough and the "alien looks" might scare people, which is not really helpful if the cyborg is designed to tell older people the way to the hotel-lobby - but certainly more steady than wheel-driven ones if on duty on moon or mars where's not that much traffic.

[ReneMiner]

8560

... :d ...

[Petr Schreiber]

Not autonomous, doesn't count :P


Petr