DARwIn-OP unveiling!!!

[i-Bot]

For the performance, I guess the proving ground will be the playing fields of Robocup, and the battlezones of Robogames.

I am even cautious on the Humanoid robot interaction part. By early convergence to a cute childlike or doll like design, the data which can be collected must be limited. They invoke by this design a specific interaction, which would be different if they for instance looked useful, elegant, or assertive. The reinforcement of the specific interactive relationship through childlike motions and even the pat me on the head button must also limit the scope and value of data collected. I hope we get some feedback from researchers on this.

If interaction works both ways and Nao is the ancestor of the new humanoid race, in the future humans will know they are cute if a robot pats them on the head ?

[Gort]

Both the Nao and the DARwIn-OP will be in Nashville. Maybe I can get video and pictures of them together? A side by side comparison.

[funk_e]

I think that the Darwin-OP looks fantastic. I wish I was in Nashville for the Conference to see both NAO and Darwin in action!

[SK]

There´s new stuff available on the sourceforge link

[JavaRN]

I found this video on youtube re. darwin-op
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Duq08VFv3hc

[funk_e]

Mike at iBioloid is doing a great job covering the DARWIN-OP at the Humanoids 2010 Conference...

Check it out at:
http://mike-ibioloid.blogspot.com/

Its unfortunate that USD$12,000 for the robot is a little outside of my budget

[billyzelsnack]

$12,000. Really? It's not like they even paid for dev costs. I'm sure they got a grant to cover those.

[funk_e]

Yes. The prices were announced today at the conference...

USD$12,000 or USD$9,600 for the Academic version.

I guess they are targeting the research and academic market, in which it is competitively priced.

[siempre.aprendiendo]

NAO from Aldebaran started/is at a similar price, about 16,000$ (12,000€), but now the price for "the developer program" is about 4,800$ (3,600€)...

[limor]

I'm quite happy that Robotis made this move and spice up the competitive landscape. Aldebaran have uncovered a market sector that was previously unknown - academics that are willing to pay $12k for a cute humanoid with human-ish like movements that can easily be programmed and is not required to perform acrobatics.
I don't think anyone imagined a couple of years ago that such a market for many hundreds of units a year existed.

[funk_e]

I'm quite happy that Robotis made this move and spice up the competitive landscape. Aldebaran have uncovered a market sector that was previously unknown - academics that are willing to pay $12k for a cute humanoid with human-ish like movements that can easily be programmed and is not required to perform acrobatics.
I don't think anyone imagined a couple of years ago that such a market for many hundreds of units a year existed.

Well said.

I also like that the aesthetics of these humanoids are attracting a lot of people into the hobby.

I certainly like the Darwin-OP.. it encourages me to make something similar using the KHR platform as a base..

[i-Bot]

I don't know about academic funding, but I guess the $10K price tag is about right. If it were too low, then departments might be expected to fund out their onging budget instead of special funding.
$50K for a robocup team seems reasonable in the academic scale of things.

Where does the money go ? Glossies, booths, suits, and designer jeans I guess.

Maybe some China company will manage to do the same for less than $2K, but the bulk of the hobby market still seems to be in the $1K region and even there volume is relatively small.

I was hoping to see a bake off between Nao and Darwin.

Thx. Gort for keeping us in touch. A very significant conference.

[Gort]

More videos:

phpBB [media]

I want to see a autonomous KungFu match between the DARwIn-OP and the Nao!!


http://mike-ibioloid.blogspot.com/2010/ ... -axis.html

[UncleBob]

phpBB [media]

My Knight Templar I can also do that.

[siempre.aprendiendo]

I have downloaded several times the Darwin source code zip, but winzip and 7Zip report an error trying to open it.

Anyone has managed to download and open it?

Ummm... I will try with Linux/unzip... No, the error is more verbously but it can't open the zip. Sometimes I has problems with "versions" of zip files.

Archive: UPenn_DARwIn-OP_Open_Source.zip
End-of-central-directory signature not found. Either this file is not
a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive. In the
latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on
the last disk(s) of this archive.