Show your bones

August 18, 2009 10:08 PM

ECCEROBOT - Embodied Cognition in a creepy looking Compliantly Engineered Robot, an anthropomimetic robot whose plastic bones and joints imitate the body structures of the fleshy ones.
posted by Artw (17 comments total)

The unblinking gase of the single webcam eye is just to freak you out though.
posted by Artw at 10:08 PM on August 18

I've been reading about embodied cognition and wondering about this very thing. This is awesome...thanks!
posted by nosila at 10:09 PM on August 18

Anthropomimetic? Great, another word I can slur when drunk.
posted by turgid dahlia at 10:13 PM on August 18 [1 favorite]

Unfortunately, there are as yet no established methods for controlling such robots, or even for describing their intrinsic movement patterns.

Not until Skynet comes online, anyway.
posted by Burhanistan at 10:16 PM on August 18

that is just creepy enough to haunt my dreams...
posted by selenized at 10:23 PM on August 18

Outcome: todo

That's deep, even for a robot.
posted by iamkimiam at 10:25 PM on August 18 [1 favorite]

A very-human-like robot made out of kite string, shock cords, hot-glue plastic, and screwdriver motors--cool! All they need is some duct tape and some coat hangers and it will look like my neighbor's car--except his car can't shake your hand (although I've never gotten close enough to find out).
posted by eye of newt at 11:10 PM on August 18 [1 favorite]

Wow - very cool robot.

Mind you, the control part of the system that they don't discuss is a very non-trivial part; I'm a coop student in a robotics lab myself, and I've talked to several grad students who's entire theses are based on (what are to humans) very simple actions. You wouldn't believe how difficult it is to do something elementary like pick up a part, or even to move a camera while keeping a target within the field of view.
posted by Arandia at 11:12 PM on August 18

I'm sort of reminded of the movie Virus, only not sucking.
posted by Artw at 11:32 PM on August 18

That's Cronos actually, ECCERobot gets legs.
posted by tellurian at 11:55 PM on August 18

From the video narration: "ECCERobot is able to interact with humans...in an inherently safe way."

For some reason, this statement was the exact opposite of comforting; it seems too rich with potential irony.
posted by davejay at 12:10 AM on August 19 [1 favorite]

Might also be called a puppet.
posted by StickyCarpet at 12:38 AM on August 19

The unblinking gase of the single webcam eye is just to freak you out though.

When the robot's wearing a white shirt, that single eye makes it remind me of a scrawnier Combine Elite. Inherently safe?
posted by haltingproblemsolved at 5:38 AM on August 19 [1 favorite]

The narrator also sounded quite robotic, with a very monotonous way of talking. Perhaps that was intentional , but it also added to the weirdness.
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 5:45 AM on August 19

They built shoulders and a collarbone. And knees, and ankles. Seriously? We humans did not get the benefit of intelligent design in our construction. Shouldn't we at least give that consideration to our robots?

Also, biomimetic polymetal would be nice.
posted by adamrice at 7:08 AM on August 19 [1 favorite]

I won't worry until they give it a chassis that looks like this.
posted by happyroach at 7:58 AM on August 19

The most striking thing to me is the jerky motions of the robot that are, in part, due to the problem of continuously rebalancing the body as its position changes, a skill we learn after 3 or 4 years of practice and become so proficient that the process is seamless and unconscious. That a highly sophisticated robot is so bad at it demonstrates the difficulty of the task.
posted by Mental Wimp at 3:21 PM on August 19