[extropy-chat] WowWee Toys and Evolution Robotics to make home robots smarter

[Neil H.]

Another slashdot submission:

"WowWee Toys, the creators of robots like the hack-friendly Robosapien and
the upcoming <a
href=http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1934971,00.asp>SCOTY</a>,
has <a href=http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1941233,00.asp>announced</a>
a partnership with Evolution Robotics. WowWee's next generation of robots
will make use of Evolution's tech for <a href=
http://www.evolution.com/core/ViPR/>visual object recognition</a> and <a
href=http://www.evolution.com/products/northstar/works.masn>indoor
position-finding</a>, hopefully with future versions being able to not just
entertain, but also 'perform useful tasks such as fetching a beer or even
helping to carry the groceries.'"

This is pretty cool... ER has pretty much the best real-time commercial
visual recognition software out there, and I've heard good things about
their position-finding tech. WowWee's Robosapien, already has decent
locomotion and grasping capabilities. Upgraded and combined with the ability
to recognize objects in the environment, and remember where they are, and
you can do some very interesting things. Hopefully WowWee will keep on being
hack-friendly and enthusiasts will be able to augment the new robots to be
even better.

-- Neil
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