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Segway robot

255 points by tomerico 11y ago

chinathrow 11y ago
This might actually work: "AN EXTENDABLE ROBOT FOR THERE ARE MANY POSSIBILITIES OUT THERE. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR GEARS TO BE?" Let the public find the exact usage cases, provide the basic tooling such as mobility, GPS, depth camera etc.
- cake 11y ago
  Meh, I was trying to find an actual usage of this robot. I guess even Segway has no idea what to do with it.
jakozaur 11y ago
Wow, I use Double Robot: http://www.doublerobotics.com/ http://www.doublerobotics.com/ and was wondering how to script this thing. E.g. appear at meeting and record it for ppl in different timezone. However, it seems to be hard with Double. With Segway it may the killer use case.
- trymas 11y ago
  It remembers me a south park halloween special episode, where Stan facetimes with it's iPad [0]. It's my personal opinion, but even though idea looks rather good (give a physical presence, by working remotely), wouldn't it be just a very strange and awkward (and maybe smug) to use? Like the original segway, which was very cool invention, but did not gain much traction, due to how awkward it is, how people look smug using it, etc (even though 'hoverboard' gained a lot of popularity, but is IMHO an inferior gadget). All in all, cool, though IMHO people will need to take a lot of time to be accustomed by such device. [0] http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/screencrush.com/442/files/2012/10/sp_1612_promo01.jpg http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/screencrush.com/442/f... P.S. cannot compare to segway robot, as their servers seem to struggle to load the content at the moment of writing this comment.
  - spin 11y ago
    Wired had an article about this: http://www.wired.com/2015/09/my-life-as-a-robot-double-robotics-telecommuting-longread/ http://www.wired.com/2015/09/my-life-as-a-robot-double-robot...
    - trymas 11y ago
      Nice.. Though if I would work in such office, personally it would be rather awkward and cringeworthy experience on either end. And the video did not show any advantages against classic conference video call (it wasn't the goal of a video, but if there would've been more uses for it, then it would've shown in the video). You basically just can wander around the office in glorified RC vehicle, drive into the conference room and chat during a meeting.
      - arethuza 11y ago
        They could do a T-800 shaped "remote manager" option...
      - dpark 11y ago
        The value of the robot is that everyone else doesn't need to be set up for video calls. We have a remote worker who uses one in my office periodically (actually two remote workers share it, but I rarely see the other person use it). He can roll into anyone's office and chat with them. I have a camera set up in my office specifically for video conferences, but most people do not. He can still conference with then in an ad hoc manner.
        pavel_lishin 11y ago
        > I have a camera set up in my office specifically for video conferences, but most people do not. Don't most laptops these days have an integrated camera?
        ricardobeat 11y ago
        And how do the other people in the room see the remote person? How easy it is to do that while making sure the camera catches everyone? How do you start the call, what software do you use? The robot sidesteps all of these.
- Angostura 11y ago
  > killer use case. I'm scared.
  - jakozaur 11y ago
    Great point. I guess there will be a year when more ppl will be killed by drones than by guns operated by human.
  - Zigurd 11y ago
    That's why I want a Boston Dynamics Atlas as my telepresence.
- mino 11y ago
  I have a Double too, since a year or so. It works ok most of the time, but it is so frustrating that: 1) they didn't release any SDK 2) even with the 99$ audio kit, the sound quality is so poor. The directional mic really sucks. 3) they repeated the same mistakes with the recently announced Double2, and they increased their prices even more.
- evilmushroom 11y ago
  How do you like your double? My company is wanting to buy a number of remote robots--- they were one of the ones I was considering.
  - jakozaur 11y ago
    I would suggest buy one and try it before you buy more of them. I like it, use it on average twice in any week. Got first generation. So much better than hangout. I got all accessories (additional mic and charging dock) and from what I heard ppl have so much worser experience without them.
donkeyd 11y ago
I had hoped that this would be a self-driving Segway, but it seems that when you ride it, all the sensors are covered by your legs. This could be the first step to robots getting into the main stream though, since it has some useful functionality next to being a robot.
digi_owl 11y ago
Intel inside huh? I guess the camera array used is based on Intel Realsense then.
- chinathrow 11y ago
  Yes, that is correct. "Intel RealSense RGB-D camera enables depth sensing. Great for development on object recognition, tracking and other cool projects."
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    Well well, missed that part. Anyways, this seems to confirm a worry i had about Realsense. Intel seems to have turned it into a "bundle" item, so that you can't buy it for something without also buying other components from Intel.
    - adventured 11y ago
      $99, hack away http://click.intel.com/realsense.html http://click.intel.com/realsense.html
      - digi_owl 11y ago
        Huh, last time i checked they were not shipping.
  - steve_k 11y ago
    The problem that I see with the real-sense is that just like the Kinect it's based on structured light. This means that it will only work indoors (just like the Kinect). So their cool demo with putting that on a drone is kind of pointless, because who flies a drone indoors? There are now some devices available which can provide depth data through passive stereo vision. I have recently seen this one in action: http://nerian.com/products/sp1-stereo-vision/ http://nerian.com/products/sp1-stereo-vision/ The problem with that, however, is that it is targeted at industrial market and probably way to expensive for any ordinary consumers. I guess we will still have to wait for some major revolution in depth sensing.
ideamonk 11y ago
OT: they forgot to setup their meta tags properly. The description is set to "Responsive Minimal Bootstrap Theme"
- fratlas 11y ago
  A funny find, but why were you looking at their source?
  - paulojreis 11y ago
    Not the OP, but I do this more frequently than I should - probably just to think 'ah, noobs, they didn't minify their JS'. :)
  - Gmo 11y ago
    The OP might have done like me : copy/paste the link in Slack and that's the preview text that is appearing
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Why not? For some of us it's a decades-old habit, from back when the Web was more friendly.
    - accommodavid 11y ago
      I just looked at the source code and, well, wow. Comments sometimes in English and sometimes in Chinese, scripts are being loaded all over the place, one tag is just commented out, one inline script does nothing but assign a global variable to a value that's presumably just an output from PHP and many more things that feel really... odd for something that's supposed to advertise a new and complex technology.
      - vinceguidry 11y ago
        I wouldn't be so surprised. They're a robotics company, not a web design company. They probably contracted it out.
stock_toaster 11y ago
It kind of reminds me of Johnny five!
ck2 11y ago
"We target to start shipping Segway Robot Developer Edition in early Q3 2016" so 7-8 months from now or later
- vectorjohn 11y ago
  Yes, that is how you time.
tzm 11y ago
I want this to welcome me at the airport.
kluck 11y ago
js;dr
ragebol 11y ago
So you sit on its head if you use it as a 'hoverboard', that's curious. But what could be the use cases for a robot like this? Its head is too low for telepresence like Double Robotics. The arms-extension looks nice, but it can't grasp anything with it because it seems to stiff, Lego-like hands. Plus the hands can't reach up a table or kitchen to grab anything. Holding anything with weight would also shift the center of gravity and mess with the balancing. On the other hand, mixing this robot with a thing that is useful otherwise can get the technology out the door and get sales going to add functional arms later on.
flippyhead 11y ago
Maybe it's just me but the lead image makes it look like the dog is chasing the robot and it's scared. Which is an odd choice for a lead image.
amelius 11y ago
Would be nice if combined with a 360 degree lens, and an Oculus Rift. The problem is you can only use it indoors, because outside anybody could just steal it.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  You'd still want to be careful where you use it but perhaps it could have non-lethal anti-theft mechanisms. Maybe paint packs like banks use, some sort of taser-like shock mechanism? You could still throw a sack on it of course. But then cars and motorbikes are some of our most expensive possessions and we leave those outside quite a lot.
  - adventured 11y ago
    Definitely not paint packs. The segway is worth a lot more than a cheap change of clothing from Walmart, or a pair of overalls/coveralls. The average new car weighs 4,000 pounds, and is increasingly difficult to steal, requiring ever greater tech to do so. NYC for example has seen a 96% drop in car thefts (!) since 1990. Stealing a car is a pain in the ass. Stealing this robot, would be relatively trivial.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  >and an Oculus Rift. Well, its a telepresence robot, which means it will be at arbitrary locations doing its job. How many places have the type of reliable low-latency, high-bandwidth, low packet loss, etc wifi network to give a reliable Rift experience? I mean, we can barely do this with the powerhouse of high-end video cards via hdmi. How can we transmit a high quality 1440p per eye at 60fps over the common internet? Maybe 25mbps per eye with a lot of compression, so a good 55mbps with overhead? Note, this is live video so no buffering past a few dozen milliseconds. We can't without some really dedicated connections and a wifi client>AP relationship with little to no interference. You're not getting this in your average office or other common telepresence locales. You sure as hell aren't getting it over 3G/4G. I don't think people appreciate how exotic HMD's like the rift are. We can't just plug them in anywhere. For the 3D effect to "work" you need high resolutions and high framerates. If you can't get that, then a normal screen should be used because its a waste of resources and a waste of time strapping that thing to your face.
passive 11y ago
The most interesting thing about this for me is that the third partner is Xiaomi. They are a company that I expect any day now to eat a large portion of the consumer electronics market. Items like the Mi Band and Pistons compete well with things 4X their price. I'm very curious about their involvement here.
- bravo22 11y ago
  They own Segway.
lrizzo 11y ago
I really don't understand why for this use case people do not use a third wheel and save the energy consumed to stand still with self balancing. Not just this segway, also the double robot (the latter, at least, can claim aesthetic motivations given the barrel shape).
- tommoor 11y ago
  I guess it's aesthetics either way, having only two wheels allows the robot to turn on the spot as well without risk of hitting anything/anyone... Plus isn't self-balancing kind of segway's thing?!
- purpled_haze 11y ago
  It's got a better chance of falling down curbs and stairs more gracefully with two wheels? Getting back up is another problem, though. Also, it might be able to navigate spaces a bit easier. Finally, it looks slightly more human since we're bipedal and it's bi-wheel.
- bnegreve 11y ago
  My guess is that it saves the trouble of making a wheel that can rotate along the vertical axis (to turn left and right). That greatly simplifies the design and make the whole thing more robust.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Home Depot has decent swivel wheels for maybe eight bucks retail. The wheel that rotates doesn't have to be active.
    - bnegreve 11y ago
      Hum, I think a free swivel wheel would only work for very cheap designs. If you're not convinced, you can search for 3 wheels vehicles on google image [1]: none of the vehicles there have the 2 wheels + 1 free rotating wheel design that you recommend. https://www.google.com/search?q=3wheels&biw=1673&bih=1124&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiKz_yL-JfKAhVIJR4KHdy3AxwQ_AUIBygC https://www.google.com/search?q=3wheels&biw=1673&bih=1124&so... Edit: actually, some baby carts have it .. alright http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/EMS-Free-shipping-Good-Quality-Perambulator-Baby-Stroller-With-3Wheels/711381_1538853521.html http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/EMS-Free-shipping-Go...
deleted 11y ago
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jacquesm 11y ago
Let's hope these fare better than hitchbot: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/08/03/hitchhiking-robot-destroyed-philadelphia-ending-cross-country-trek/31051589/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/08/03/hit...
PaulHoule 11y ago
The Segway really is the architecture for "bipedal" robots and the reason you haven't seen this before is all those patents...
vinceyuan 11y ago
This is really a cool idea. Segway was acquired by Xiaomi. And the background in the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr-9p8o60gY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr-9p8o60gY is Beijing. I believe this project is developed in Beijing, China.
- keville 11y ago
  Good info, I missed that bit of news. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-15/xiaomi-backed-startup-says-it-plans-to-buy-u-s-rival-segway http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-15/xiaomi-bac...
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
I have thousands of dollars to spend on something like this if it had an arm and could do things like get items from the fridge by verbal order (with no step by step programming, just visual recognition of the fridge and how to open it), play catch with the dog, sweep up, act as a security guard when I'm gone, etc. Robotics is one of those things where the hardware, price, and networking are there but the software isn't. We don't have an AI-lite engine we can toss in for simple things a dog could understand like "get my slippers." Until someone cracks that code, this stuff is just going to be rich-boy novelties and unneeded contenders in the already over-saturated telepresence market.
- sbierwagen 11y ago
  Robotics is one of those things where the hardware, price, and networking are there but the software isn't. I'm not sure where you got the impression that the hardware is ready for prime time, because it ain't. I work in mobile robotics, and I wrote a blog post about this a while ago: http://c1qfxugcgy0.tumblr.com/post/31187427192/the-enduring-tragedy-of-the-robotics-industry http://c1qfxugcgy0.tumblr.com/post/31187427192/the-enduring-... Batteries aren't good enough, linear actuators have awful power/weight ratios, and computers just aren't fast enough to solve CV problems and calculate grasps and paths in seconds, rather than minutes. Saying you "have thousands of dollars to spend" is great, but not sufficient. The PR2 I talk about in the blog post costs four hundred thousand US dollars, and it sucks! It's like saying you're willing to spend five thousand bucks to buy a Lamborghini Aventador. It's going to be many decades before a useful household robot only costs ten grand. A household robot just requires too many breakthroughs in too many different fields.
  - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
    Oh I don't know, it seems to me that the PR2 is designed for industry so its pricing is going to reflect that. I suspect there is a home robot space that some startup can fill sooner than later. Whether it does all the things I listed is the big question and I suspect it won't, but it may be able to do a few things that make it a worthwhile purchase. I've played a bit with opencv, pcl, ros, etc. There's some very impressive image recognition stuff available right now that works well on commodity x86 platforms(1). I don't think the market is expecting a HAL-like or Jetsons like robot, but I could see something akin to an early 80s home computer where the product is clearly a long list of compromises but it does a few things very well and is compelling. Home robotics may be the same way for a while until it has its 1984 Macintosh moment, which as you say might be a decade or two or four away. I did appreciate your posting, but I think its a little dismissive of the some of the homebrew and smaller scale stuff out there. The PR2 is a VC backed monster designed to bring industrial robots to retail, hospitals, etc. These guys want to build the 747 of the robot world. That's great. But there are people out there building the Cessnas of the robotics world. I expect an affordable consumber product that isn't a joke xmas 2018-2020. There's just way too much potential here. 1. Home robot hackers falling in love with the super low power NUC which gives a CPUMark score around 5,000+ http://www.showusyoursensors.com/2014/09/intel-nuc-for-ros.html#comment-form http://www.showusyoursensors.com/2014/09/intel-nuc-for-ros.h...
hellameta 11y ago
This is going to be so much more awesome as drones improve.
cpitman 11y ago
Making robots with Segways was actually a thing at least around 2004-2006. Robocup is a robotics soccer league with several divisions that each have a different kind of challenge. Briefly, there was a Segway league. Each team had a single robotic Segway and a single human driven Segway which had to cooperate to score goals on the other team. Here's the page of one of the teams with pictures and videos of the Segway robots in action: http://www.nsi.edu/~nomad/segway/ http://www.nsi.edu/~nomad/segway/
clintboxe 11y ago
No way it's as good as Kevin. http://savedbythebell.wikia.com/wiki/Kevin http://savedbythebell.wikia.com/wiki/Kevin
api 11y ago
Heh... this is pretty close to the Wheelie Boy from William Gibson's recent novel The Peripheral.
yitchelle 11y ago
A side comment. Anybody else noticed a request was made to hm.baidu.com for a javascript from this site?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

255 points by tomerico 11y ago

This might actually work: "AN EXTENDABLE ROBOT FOR THERE ARE MANY POSSIBILITIES OUT THERE. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR GEARS TO BE?" Let the public find the exact usage cases, provide the basic tooling such as mobility, GPS, depth camera etc.

cake 11y ago
Meh, I was trying to find an actual usage of this robot. I guess even Segway has no idea what to do with it.

jakozaur 11y ago

Wow, I use Double Robot: http://www.doublerobotics.com/ http://www.doublerobotics.com/ and was wondering how to script this thing. E.g. appear at meeting and record it for ppl in different timezone. However, it seems to be hard with Double. With Segway it may the killer use case.

trymas 11y ago
It remembers me a south park halloween special episode, where Stan facetimes with it's iPad [0]. It's my personal opinion, but even though idea looks rather good (give a physical presence, by working remotely), wouldn't it be just a very strange and awkward (and maybe smug) to use? Like the original segway, which was very cool invention, but did not gain much traction, due to how awkward it is, how people look smug using it, etc (even though 'hoverboard' gained a lot of popularity, but is IMHO an inferior gadget). All in all, cool, though IMHO people will need to take a lot of time to be accustomed by such device. [0] http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/screencrush.com/442/files/2012/10/sp_1612_promo01.jpg http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/screencrush.com/442/f... P.S. cannot compare to segway robot, as their servers seem to struggle to load the content at the moment of writing this comment.
- spin 11y ago
  Wired had an article about this: http://www.wired.com/2015/09/my-life-as-a-robot-double-robotics-telecommuting-longread/ http://www.wired.com/2015/09/my-life-as-a-robot-double-robot...
  - trymas 11y ago
    Nice.. Though if I would work in such office, personally it would be rather awkward and cringeworthy experience on either end. And the video did not show any advantages against classic conference video call (it wasn't the goal of a video, but if there would've been more uses for it, then it would've shown in the video). You basically just can wander around the office in glorified RC vehicle, drive into the conference room and chat during a meeting.
    - arethuza 11y ago
      They could do a T-800 shaped "remote manager" option...
    - dpark 11y ago
      The value of the robot is that everyone else doesn't need to be set up for video calls. We have a remote worker who uses one in my office periodically (actually two remote workers share it, but I rarely see the other person use it). He can roll into anyone's office and chat with them. I have a camera set up in my office specifically for video conferences, but most people do not. He can still conference with then in an ad hoc manner.
      - pavel_lishin 11y ago
        > I have a camera set up in my office specifically for video conferences, but most people do not. Don't most laptops these days have an integrated camera?
        ricardobeat 11y ago
        And how do the other people in the room see the remote person? How easy it is to do that while making sure the camera catches everyone? How do you start the call, what software do you use? The robot sidesteps all of these.
Angostura 11y ago
> killer use case. I'm scared.
- jakozaur 11y ago
  Great point. I guess there will be a year when more ppl will be killed by drones than by guns operated by human.
- Zigurd 11y ago
  That's why I want a Boston Dynamics Atlas as my telepresence.
mino 11y ago
I have a Double too, since a year or so. It works ok most of the time, but it is so frustrating that: 1) they didn't release any SDK 2) even with the 99$ audio kit, the sound quality is so poor. The directional mic really sucks. 3) they repeated the same mistakes with the recently announced Double2, and they increased their prices even more.
evilmushroom 11y ago
How do you like your double? My company is wanting to buy a number of remote robots--- they were one of the ones I was considering.
- jakozaur 11y ago
  I would suggest buy one and try it before you buy more of them. I like it, use it on average twice in any week. Got first generation. So much better than hangout. I got all accessories (additional mic and charging dock) and from what I heard ppl have so much worser experience without them.

donkeyd 11y ago

I had hoped that this would be a self-driving Segway, but it seems that when you ride it, all the sensors are covered by your legs. This could be the first step to robots getting into the main stream though, since it has some useful functionality next to being a robot.

digi_owl 11y ago

Intel inside huh? I guess the camera array used is based on Intel Realsense then.

chinathrow 11y ago
Yes, that is correct. "Intel RealSense RGB-D camera enables depth sensing. Great for development on object recognition, tracking and other cool projects."
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Well well, missed that part. Anyways, this seems to confirm a worry i had about Realsense. Intel seems to have turned it into a "bundle" item, so that you can't buy it for something without also buying other components from Intel.
  - adventured 11y ago
    $99, hack away http://click.intel.com/realsense.html http://click.intel.com/realsense.html
    - digi_owl 11y ago
      Huh, last time i checked they were not shipping.
- steve_k 11y ago
  The problem that I see with the real-sense is that just like the Kinect it's based on structured light. This means that it will only work indoors (just like the Kinect). So their cool demo with putting that on a drone is kind of pointless, because who flies a drone indoors? There are now some devices available which can provide depth data through passive stereo vision. I have recently seen this one in action: http://nerian.com/products/sp1-stereo-vision/ http://nerian.com/products/sp1-stereo-vision/ The problem with that, however, is that it is targeted at industrial market and probably way to expensive for any ordinary consumers. I guess we will still have to wait for some major revolution in depth sensing.

ideamonk 11y ago

OT: they forgot to setup their meta tags properly. The description is set to "Responsive Minimal Bootstrap Theme"

fratlas 11y ago
A funny find, but why were you looking at their source?
- paulojreis 11y ago
  Not the OP, but I do this more frequently than I should - probably just to think 'ah, noobs, they didn't minify their JS'. :)
- Gmo 11y ago
  The OP might have done like me : copy/paste the link in Slack and that's the preview text that is appearing
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Why not? For some of us it's a decades-old habit, from back when the Web was more friendly.
  - accommodavid 11y ago
    I just looked at the source code and, well, wow. Comments sometimes in English and sometimes in Chinese, scripts are being loaded all over the place, one tag is just commented out, one inline script does nothing but assign a global variable to a value that's presumably just an output from PHP and many more things that feel really... odd for something that's supposed to advertise a new and complex technology.
    - vinceguidry 11y ago
      I wouldn't be so surprised. They're a robotics company, not a web design company. They probably contracted it out.

stock_toaster 11y ago

It kind of reminds me of Johnny five!

ck2 11y ago

"We target to start shipping Segway Robot Developer Edition in early Q3 2016" so 7-8 months from now or later

vectorjohn 11y ago
Yes, that is how you time.

tzm 11y ago

I want this to welcome me at the airport.

kluck 11y ago

js;dr

ragebol 11y ago

So you sit on its head if you use it as a 'hoverboard', that's curious. But what could be the use cases for a robot like this? Its head is too low for telepresence like Double Robotics. The arms-extension looks nice, but it can't grasp anything with it because it seems to stiff, Lego-like hands. Plus the hands can't reach up a table or kitchen to grab anything. Holding anything with weight would also shift the center of gravity and mess with the balancing. On the other hand, mixing this robot with a thing that is useful otherwise can get the technology out the door and get sales going to add functional arms later on.

flippyhead 11y ago

Maybe it's just me but the lead image makes it look like the dog is chasing the robot and it's scared. Which is an odd choice for a lead image.

amelius 11y ago

Would be nice if combined with a 360 degree lens, and an Oculus Rift. The problem is you can only use it indoors, because outside anybody could just steal it.

pbhjpbhj 11y ago
You'd still want to be careful where you use it but perhaps it could have non-lethal anti-theft mechanisms. Maybe paint packs like banks use, some sort of taser-like shock mechanism? You could still throw a sack on it of course. But then cars and motorbikes are some of our most expensive possessions and we leave those outside quite a lot.
- adventured 11y ago
  Definitely not paint packs. The segway is worth a lot more than a cheap change of clothing from Walmart, or a pair of overalls/coveralls. The average new car weighs 4,000 pounds, and is increasingly difficult to steal, requiring ever greater tech to do so. NYC for example has seen a 96% drop in car thefts (!) since 1990. Stealing a car is a pain in the ass. Stealing this robot, would be relatively trivial.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
>and an Oculus Rift. Well, its a telepresence robot, which means it will be at arbitrary locations doing its job. How many places have the type of reliable low-latency, high-bandwidth, low packet loss, etc wifi network to give a reliable Rift experience? I mean, we can barely do this with the powerhouse of high-end video cards via hdmi. How can we transmit a high quality 1440p per eye at 60fps over the common internet? Maybe 25mbps per eye with a lot of compression, so a good 55mbps with overhead? Note, this is live video so no buffering past a few dozen milliseconds. We can't without some really dedicated connections and a wifi client>AP relationship with little to no interference. You're not getting this in your average office or other common telepresence locales. You sure as hell aren't getting it over 3G/4G. I don't think people appreciate how exotic HMD's like the rift are. We can't just plug them in anywhere. For the 3D effect to "work" you need high resolutions and high framerates. If you can't get that, then a normal screen should be used because its a waste of resources and a waste of time strapping that thing to your face.

passive 11y ago

The most interesting thing about this for me is that the third partner is Xiaomi. They are a company that I expect any day now to eat a large portion of the consumer electronics market. Items like the Mi Band and Pistons compete well with things 4X their price. I'm very curious about their involvement here.

bravo22 11y ago
They own Segway.

lrizzo 11y ago

I really don't understand why for this use case people do not use a third wheel and save the energy consumed to stand still with self balancing. Not just this segway, also the double robot (the latter, at least, can claim aesthetic motivations given the barrel shape).

tommoor 11y ago
I guess it's aesthetics either way, having only two wheels allows the robot to turn on the spot as well without risk of hitting anything/anyone... Plus isn't self-balancing kind of segway's thing?!
purpled_haze 11y ago
It's got a better chance of falling down curbs and stairs more gracefully with two wheels? Getting back up is another problem, though. Also, it might be able to navigate spaces a bit easier. Finally, it looks slightly more human since we're bipedal and it's bi-wheel.
bnegreve 11y ago
My guess is that it saves the trouble of making a wheel that can rotate along the vertical axis (to turn left and right). That greatly simplifies the design and make the whole thing more robust.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Home Depot has decent swivel wheels for maybe eight bucks retail. The wheel that rotates doesn't have to be active.
  - bnegreve 11y ago
    Hum, I think a free swivel wheel would only work for very cheap designs. If you're not convinced, you can search for 3 wheels vehicles on google image [1]: none of the vehicles there have the 2 wheels + 1 free rotating wheel design that you recommend. https://www.google.com/search?q=3wheels&biw=1673&bih=1124&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiKz_yL-JfKAhVIJR4KHdy3AxwQ_AUIBygC https://www.google.com/search?q=3wheels&biw=1673&bih=1124&so... Edit: actually, some baby carts have it .. alright http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/EMS-Free-shipping-Good-Quality-Perambulator-Baby-Stroller-With-3Wheels/711381_1538853521.html http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/EMS-Free-shipping-Go...

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jacquesm 11y ago

Let's hope these fare better than hitchbot: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/08/03/hitchhiking-robot-destroyed-philadelphia-ending-cross-country-trek/31051589/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/08/03/hit...

PaulHoule 11y ago

The Segway really is the architecture for "bipedal" robots and the reason you haven't seen this before is all those patents...

vinceyuan 11y ago

This is really a cool idea. Segway was acquired by Xiaomi. And the background in the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr-9p8o60gY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr-9p8o60gY is Beijing. I believe this project is developed in Beijing, China.

keville 11y ago
Good info, I missed that bit of news. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-15/xiaomi-backed-startup-says-it-plans-to-buy-u-s-rival-segway http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-15/xiaomi-bac...

drzaiusapelord 11y ago

I have thousands of dollars to spend on something like this if it had an arm and could do things like get items from the fridge by verbal order (with no step by step programming, just visual recognition of the fridge and how to open it), play catch with the dog, sweep up, act as a security guard when I'm gone, etc. Robotics is one of those things where the hardware, price, and networking are there but the software isn't. We don't have an AI-lite engine we can toss in for simple things a dog could understand like "get my slippers." Until someone cracks that code, this stuff is just going to be rich-boy novelties and unneeded contenders in the already over-saturated telepresence market.

sbierwagen 11y ago
Robotics is one of those things where the hardware, price, and networking are there but the software isn't. I'm not sure where you got the impression that the hardware is ready for prime time, because it ain't. I work in mobile robotics, and I wrote a blog post about this a while ago: http://c1qfxugcgy0.tumblr.com/post/31187427192/the-enduring-tragedy-of-the-robotics-industry http://c1qfxugcgy0.tumblr.com/post/31187427192/the-enduring-... Batteries aren't good enough, linear actuators have awful power/weight ratios, and computers just aren't fast enough to solve CV problems and calculate grasps and paths in seconds, rather than minutes. Saying you "have thousands of dollars to spend" is great, but not sufficient. The PR2 I talk about in the blog post costs four hundred thousand US dollars, and it sucks! It's like saying you're willing to spend five thousand bucks to buy a Lamborghini Aventador. It's going to be many decades before a useful household robot only costs ten grand. A household robot just requires too many breakthroughs in too many different fields.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  Oh I don't know, it seems to me that the PR2 is designed for industry so its pricing is going to reflect that. I suspect there is a home robot space that some startup can fill sooner than later. Whether it does all the things I listed is the big question and I suspect it won't, but it may be able to do a few things that make it a worthwhile purchase. I've played a bit with opencv, pcl, ros, etc. There's some very impressive image recognition stuff available right now that works well on commodity x86 platforms(1). I don't think the market is expecting a HAL-like or Jetsons like robot, but I could see something akin to an early 80s home computer where the product is clearly a long list of compromises but it does a few things very well and is compelling. Home robotics may be the same way for a while until it has its 1984 Macintosh moment, which as you say might be a decade or two or four away. I did appreciate your posting, but I think its a little dismissive of the some of the homebrew and smaller scale stuff out there. The PR2 is a VC backed monster designed to bring industrial robots to retail, hospitals, etc. These guys want to build the 747 of the robot world. That's great. But there are people out there building the Cessnas of the robotics world. I expect an affordable consumber product that isn't a joke xmas 2018-2020. There's just way too much potential here. 1. Home robot hackers falling in love with the super low power NUC which gives a CPUMark score around 5,000+ http://www.showusyoursensors.com/2014/09/intel-nuc-for-ros.html#comment-form http://www.showusyoursensors.com/2014/09/intel-nuc-for-ros.h...

hellameta 11y ago

This is going to be so much more awesome as drones improve.

cpitman 11y ago

Making robots with Segways was actually a thing at least around 2004-2006. Robocup is a robotics soccer league with several divisions that each have a different kind of challenge. Briefly, there was a Segway league. Each team had a single robotic Segway and a single human driven Segway which had to cooperate to score goals on the other team. Here's the page of one of the teams with pictures and videos of the Segway robots in action: http://www.nsi.edu/~nomad/segway/ http://www.nsi.edu/~nomad/segway/

clintboxe 11y ago

No way it's as good as Kevin. http://savedbythebell.wikia.com/wiki/Kevin http://savedbythebell.wikia.com/wiki/Kevin

api 11y ago

Heh... this is pretty close to the Wheelie Boy from William Gibson's recent novel The Peripheral.

yitchelle 11y ago

A side comment. Anybody else noticed a request was made to hm.baidu.com for a javascript from this site?

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