May 25, 2002
Evo at E3

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.

The Evolution booth An ultrabot hopes to be adopted

And, of course, see what some of the newest and most promising game companies, like uh, the U.S. Army, had to offer.

The Army has the best hardware

I'm glad I didn't have this job.

Showing off the gui "...and that's why you need one of these!"

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.

A robot prepares to sit and watch Everybody Loves Raymond

Here's a 15 second video of the robot in action (MPEG, about 5.5 MB):

Do the Dew

Posted by jjwiseman at May 25, 2002 06:39 PM
Comments

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 AM

Coming 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
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