Friday afternoon I was able to sneak away for a couple hours to E3 to see the sights and bother the people working at the Evolution booth.
And, of course, see what some of the newest and most promising game companies, like uh, the U.S. Army, had to offer.
I'm glad I didn't have this job.
The robot demo that got a lot of press was one in which a robot listens for the presenter to say "mountain dew" or "beer", looks for and goes to the refrigerator, looks for and finds the desired beverage sitting on a shelf in front of the refrigerator, picks the beverage up, and brings it back to the recliner.
Here's a 15 second video of the robot in action (MPEG, about 5.5 MB):
Ah, the beer-fetching robot. The Grail of robotics. I remember talking to Jim Firby about it 10 years ago, when Chip was the state of the art. What happened in technology and/or the market to suddenly make things so much better and cheaper so quickly? I mean, 10 years ago you needed to have a PhD, a DARPA grant, a pile of parts catalogs, and an obsession to get a robot that could even recognize a beer. Now you just need a thousand bucks and a laptop. More importantly, 10 years ago someone proposing a business like Evolution would have been counselled to get psychotropic drugs from the shrink. Now, our own friend John works there. How? Why? What's the hidden story here?
Posted by: Troutgirl on June 1, 2002 09:17 AMComing at you. Look for a cheap beer-fetching robot in 2006. Waiting for patent to issue.
eo
Posted by: Fetch-FR on April 5, 2005 10:10 AM