RoboSavvy humanoids @ BBC5 The Gadget Show

[limor]

Tomorrow there's going to be a shooting of <strike>BBC5</strike> Channel5 The Gadget Show in Manchester. We got invited to the event:

..I am contacting you regarding the possible loan of some of your fabulous robots for channel five’s technology programme, the Gadget Show. We will be filming in Manchester at the Science and Industry Museum on February 9th and it would be great to include these robots in the race that we are staging. It is a central part of the programme and the race will be started by Titan, the huge robot as featured on Big Brother. I would be most grateful if you would be able to help with this request. We would also be able to place a link for your website on the Gadget Show website...

We came there today to see the setup and ran across one of the presenters and keen robot fan Jason Bradbury. Forum member Orac and NunoGato and have prep'd up 6 robots including BIOLOID GP which we have received from Korea especially for this event. There's going to be some 40 odd robots competing in the event and the floor is of concrete which means the walking gaits may not work and the robot feet need to be covered with some plastic or else they will be disintegrated by the sand-paper-like friction.



Nuno, Limor, Jason Bradbury, Orac (Peter, wearing the new RoboSavvy T-Shirt)

[tempusmaster offline]

Fantastic! Congratulations!

Hopefully we'll be able to see some of the action via YouTube later since the Gadget Show seems impossible to find over here.

Good luck!

[tempusmaster offline]

As they say in show business, "Break a leg."

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[SK offline]

Have some fun The Dribblers' appearance on the Gadget Show can be seen here:
http://fwd.five.tv/gadget-show/videos/o ... t-football
(At least in some places outside germany, I only get a "video not available in your country" warning).

[tempusmaster offline]

Have some fun The Dribblers' appearance on the Gadget Show can be seen here:
http://fwd.five.tv/gadget-show/videos/o ... t-football
(At least in some places outside germany, I only get a "video not available in your country" warning).

Same warning message appears here in Japan when I try to watch it.

[limor]

[update 14Feb: I was kindly requested to remove a couple of pictures. Hopefully they can be reinstated after the show is aired tonight]

First, apologies for incorrectly using BBC5 in the title. It is Channel-5, not BBC.

We arrived at the Manchester science museum this morning at 9am and were there till around 6pm. The whole studio was set up inside the main hall of the museum. I never knew how involved it was to set up such a TV show. There were 2 huge vans full of equipment outside, about 20 crew members, 5 cameras, and from around 2pm there was an audience of 300 people that were very effectively controlled by the production team.
The Gadget Show presenters spent the whole morning rehearsing. Every shot, look, crack, move, laugh and most of the text was pre-scripted and usually required at least 2-3 takes.
You would think when watching TV that these guys just stand there and look pretty. This may be true for in-studio celebrity talk-shows but this Gadget Show filming was nothing like i had imagined. These guys and girls work hard getting everything perfect (in the eyes of the producer who was constantly commanding everyone on set through their ear-pieces which made the presenters look like there were being interrupted by an invisible deity some of the time).


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They had an aquarium with piranhas and the 2nd tallest guy in UK and some guys that were building Kevlar protection pouches for their iphones and explosions and gadgets..



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The race was on uneven concrete floor which prevented most humanoids from walking properly.
RoboSavvy team had KHR3, Bioloid comprehensive, Bioloid GP (brought in from Korea for the show), Orac's Manoi, Robobuilder.
The robot race was composed of a cacophony of 40 odd moving contraptions some of them remote controlled some vaccuum cleaners, a massive lawn-mower robot (that later on caused havoc by stampeding over hapless robots on the track) and even a custom autonomous car for a Robonova (built by Active-Robots team ).



We (roboteers) were stationed behind the makeshift studio in a back-room charging batteries and ensuring the remotes work.


We realized few days before the show that we didn't have the standard remote control for KHR3 in the office so Nuno improvised a solution with an Arduino. More of that in a separate thread.


Eventually we won the race... Ofcourse.
Suzi (one of the presenters) is here holding the Bioloid GP robot for a victory full frontal shot.

The episode will air on Monday at 8pm. Previous episodes of the show are available to non-UK IP addresses via torrent so hopefully by Tuesday this episode to be available too.

[limor]

As they say in show business, "Break a leg."

Thanks for reminding me of this mishap back in 2006 in a radio station in Compenhagen. I was there near the camera playing with the remote control when the RN1 flipped over the table edge by mistake.

[Traull offline]

i will look forward to seeing the carnage the lawn-mower robot caused ha ha.

[limor]

The lovely Pollyanna wanted to thank RoboSavvy for bringing along all the robots and making it all happen.

[limor]

25 minutes after the show ended and google has already indexed at least two sites that host a link to some other site where the episode can be downloaded.

The robot race is around minute 21. Very entertaining.

[limor]

The Bioloid GP is available for pre-ordering

[limor]

Channel5 have the 2 minute Robot Race with the winning Bioloid GP on their site. Unfortunately it will only stream to UK IP addresses.
http://fwd.five.tv/gadget-show/videos/c ... robot-race

[Orac offline]

Hi all,

The filming was great fun, mixed in with lots of waiting. Although I was a bit disappointed with the length of the Robot Race feature, at least we got the Bioloid and the Manoi with some coverage at the end.

I am sure that the robot race will appear on Youtube shortly

Not much in the way of photos from me



Orac

[Orac offline]

Pssst, over here


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7QMsj6oWzA

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[PaulL offline]

I wonder how things would've gone if the RN1 had cartwheeled down the track instead...