OTTAWA – According to the wonderful people at the Invest Korea booth at GTEC this year, there are many good reasons to pour your money into the country’s burgeoning tech sector: a well-educated, productive workforce; a consumer market of 48 million people with the world’s highest broadband Internet subscription rate; powerful economic incentives for transnationals; and robots.
Regular readers of my IT Bidness column –- both of you -– may recall that I have a fascination with robots, and for a while, would find any excuse to write about them, to the point where I got the enough-with-the-robots-already lecture from the boss.
I even considered building a simple robot myself out of a discarded mouse, a couple of electric motors and stray electronics, but it only took a few painful encounters with my soldering iron –- the eyes aren’t what they used to be, ya know –- to disabuse me of that notion.
So when the show floor was abuzz about Hubo, described as a “biped walking humanoid robot with android head,” I had to see him for myself.
Through an interpreter, Won Young Oh of the Humanoid Robot Research Centre –- wouldn’t you love to have that on your business card? –- told me that development of the bipedal technology that allows Hubo to balance on two feet, walk, turn and do tai chi (I’m not kidding) began in 2002. Hubo was born in 2004, the successor to two previous models, imaginatively named KHR-01 and, um, KHR-02.
Sensors through the robot’s body –- force and torque sensors, inertial sensors and accelerometers –- allow Hubo to use the 480-watt servo motors that control its arms and legs to keep his two-legged balance. Smaller motors control the individual fingers on each hand (Hubo can play rock, paper scissors). Eventually, he’ll have voice and facial recognition. He’s wirelessly controlled by two PCs, one for his body and one for his head.
That’s where Hugo gets a little eerie. The head. To be specific, Albert Einstein’s head.
The latex reproduction of Einstein is uncanny. Hubo’s capable of a number of facial expressions, from wide-eyed surprise to fear, though during the demonstration –- which drew crowds of dozens on the show floor -– it was a much narrow range, from intense concentration to really intense concentration. His eyebrows were especially mobile, something like a Labrador retriever’s. In fact, with his sad-eyed expression and shaggy mane, there is something decidedly canine about him.
With his astronaut-style body, the overall effect is of a tiny Albert Einstein (he’s about four and a half feet tall) struggling to shuffle along in an overweight space suit. The wrinkled shirt collar poking out of the top is the crowning touch.
In action, Hubo can walk, turn around, dance (a little) and, as mentioned, do some tai chi in an exquisitely focused manner. Yoga, likely, is out of the question. He’ll also retain his balance after a shove, though I doubt he’d stand up to a Zdeno Chara bodycheck. Then again, neither would you.
Oh doesn’t have a timeline for productization of Hubo –- it’ll take an indefinite period of time to stabilize the technology, he says. And Hubo’s got a $500,000 price tag at the moment, so you won’t see him soon in a WalMart near you. But he does envision a day when Hubo’s descendants will be helpmeets and playmates for humans, especially seniors.
But I can’t get over the effect of that head, like it had been cryogenically preserved and given a new mechanical body. If Hubo can swing a bat, maybe there’s comeback in the waiting for Ted Williams.
Dave Webb is a bipedal humanoid who is able to walk, dance, exhibit facial expressions and type without intervention, though he’s sure someone’s planning one.
