It's still user controlled like a surgical robot but for construction. I'm guessing it's eventually going to be run remotely by a bunch of japanese operators too old to work in the field. Also disappointingly small for "enormous", was hoping for a gundam.
It reaches 12m on a telescoped crane, the actual scale of the robot body looks pretty small, smaller than the cab of the truck. Pretty human scale all things considered, makes one wonder if it's goign to be mounted on treads or legs one day for indoor use. It does look very cool indeed.
Not much different than everyday on sites everywhere with boom cranes. Which are arguably much more dangerous due to being less dexterous and no video. Notably 1:23 where it's similar to working with a crane.
That looks incredibly cool, and also instantly nausea inducing - I can’t imagine the video feed and the head gyros are fast enough to avoid that little bit of lag and judder that turn VR into a vomit machine.
It's a completely natural movement for the operator, that will require almost no practice or training, and also leaves the operator's hands free to operate other controls.
I wonder if it wouldn't be easier / more comfortable for the worker to just get a low-poly reconstructed 3D rendering of the environment. That way at least they could move their head as much as they want and still get a read-time feed in their goggle without the usual VR tricks.
Responses so far say to optimize neck latency or use a joystick but why not use a 360 camera and handle it in reprojection. First pass could literally be a gopro or insta360 streaming to the headset and you could eventually integrate cameras and do the stitching yourself. The tech already exists and works, and it removes moving parts and actuators
Why not?
There's no need for the neck to have more than 1~5 ms of lag, and about 5~10 ms photon lag even with a framebuffer involved (if you align the rolling shutter of the camera to the row-by-row multiplexed display, say OLED @ 240Hz, you should manage 4~5 ms).
I like how the robot head motion is linked to the operator's head motion, such that the robot is able to nod its head near 2:15. I also like the feedback control near 0:35.
Patlabor is criminally underrated, in particular Patlabor II by Oshii. Often neglected given how popular his other stuff like GitS is but probably one of the best animated films when it comes to post WWII Japan's military/political questions.
It seems that in many cases, Japanese robot designers prefer humanoid form over a more practical design. Watching the video linked by ano-ther, it seems that many of the demonstrated tasks could benefit from cameras that are placed more closely to the tool. Accurately placing parts, inspections, and the tree limb removal tasks are examples of this.
Ya it's not a human, you're not limited to binocular vision and can have multiple sets of cameras pretty easily of you wanted. Who knows what the designers are thinking.
I doubt it. Boston Dynamics creates humanoid robots as well, and makes design decisions which aren't always maximally efficient, but no one makes such an infantilizing assumption about American engineers.
Huh. Robot with denim jacket in Chromium, but placeholder image (mountain and sun icon) in Firefox. Can view in Firefox if cb query param is removed. Weird.
This seems like a decent force multiplier, though I have to wonder how efficient the results are compared to just having a small crew of workers with a boom lift and a good toolbox. There are also the attention-splitting issues you can't cover with just one person in a cab, like marking off areas and directing traffic/pedestrians.
84% of the global population are in low and middle income countries, and the vast majority of those people could have a significantly higher quality of living in a place like Japan if they were given the neccesary political protections.
6 billion people is not infinity people, and not all of those people are willing or able to move to a place like Japan to try their luck. But the idea that immigration is anywhere close to an end is preposterous.
Populations growth rates have fallen very fast around the world sometimes with in the span of one or two generations. The global fertility rate has fallen to 2.3. Sub Saharan Africa is one of the few places left with what we would consider large growth rates. Increased standards of living in these places we typically imported people from can quickly cut off this flow and put western nations at risk, whereas we thought this flow was unlimited.
Add to this the cost of living in western countries has spiraled out of control recently, the idea that "Just move to X, things will be better" is fading from what it used to be.
But the immigration seems to have triggered resurgence of fascism and populism worldwide. So while economically sustainable in theory it might be unsustainable for cultural reasons.
Has anywhere remained anywhere after a couple hundred years of colonization, conquest and migration? This weird idea that populations are, or should be, eternal and unchanging is pure fantasy.
What is it with media that attributes everything to "Japan"? Here we have a private company trying out a robot made by a much smaller private company, in Japan. It's not like the government of Japan is rolling out gundams across the nation.
The average Guardian reader never heard of that private company and definitely never heard of that much smaller private company. "Company in Japan" is also longer than simply "Japan". Plus there's still some latent orientalism at play.
But while the government of Japan likely isn't particularly involved in this project, states still like to claim tech advances (or gimmicks) happening in their country. There's a reason you often see politicians at opening ceremonies even when their government contributed nothing to what is being opened.
Enormous humanoid robots for everything! Have you ever watched one of those videos where somebody makes a mini concrete building in a few days? I'd be cool to just scale that up, if it's possible, perhaps with faster-setting concrete or something.
Bad idea of the day: Perhaps you could "Ender's Game" it, to have a kid playing with legos control a giant robot, building a full-sized version of that set remotely. What could go wrong.
Why does it have a swivelling head? I would have just mounted a 360 camera there. Then the operator can turn their head in any direction as fast as they want without the latency of waiting for a mechanical head to catch up.
Good point, the sensor count exponentiates and the optics get a lot more complicated if you want a fully integrated system. Nothing on the market I know of but with where we are on the scaling curves now might be the time to try something like it - you could put together a basic proof of concept with a load of commercial sensor elements and wide angle lenses on a sphere. Eventually you can consolidate the central sensors and lenses into concentric hemispheres. You can reduce the data volume by narrowing the camera angles eventually too
Not sure there’s a market but maybe with VR stereo 360 becomes more valuable, who knows. Technologically doable though
It's still user controlled like a surgical robot but for construction. I'm guessing it's eventually going to be run remotely by a bunch of japanese operators too old to work in the field. Also disappointingly small for "enormous", was hoping for a gundam.
Gotta start somewhere, once the initial bugs are sorted out we can start forcing ambivalent high schoolers into existential crisis situations.
Lol
...all's right with the world.
I think putting it in a reptile suit would not be too much to ask.
Eh, the classic Gundam is around 18 m tall. This comes close at 12 m. The upper body and arms certainly invoke mobile suit aesthetics though
It reaches 12m on a telescoped crane, the actual scale of the robot body looks pretty small, smaller than the cab of the truck. Pretty human scale all things considered, makes one wonder if it's goign to be mounted on treads or legs one day for indoor use. It does look very cool indeed.
in the context of a train line, you may not want it any taller, since there are things like overhead wires to deal with if it gets any taller.
I don't think the argument is that it should be bigger. Just that if it's not enormous we should not describe it as enormous.
Perhaps this can serve as just a single leg of a larger combination though
The AV-98 Ingram from the Patlabor anime is 8 m tall, so I wouldn't count this robot out.
And the Knightmare Frames from Code Geass are around 4-6 meters tall.
By enormous I was expecting something that could lift a rail car.
Honestly, I thought it would be towering above Docomo Tower.
As if having a big human conttolled robot could never trigger the dreams of many mecha addicts, right?
Lol
[dead]
Here is a video of it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owSJK7vMSLk
Interestingly, humans come very close to it during operation.
Not much different than everyday on sites everywhere with boom cranes. Which are arguably much more dangerous due to being less dexterous and no video. Notably 1:23 where it's similar to working with a crane.
That looks incredibly cool, and also instantly nausea inducing - I can’t imagine the video feed and the head gyros are fast enough to avoid that little bit of lag and judder that turn VR into a vomit machine.
The feedback on the arm is very cool, though.
FPV drone hardware has commercialized very cheap very low latency video feeds to headsets.
Not with headtracking though. Not sure that's reasonably possible.
FPV headsets can have head tracking. I don’t know cost now, but it was possible even in 2012/2013/2014 when I worked in that industry.
What's the advantages of head tracking though? I don't see it's in anyway better than just joystick to control robot head movement.
It's a completely natural movement for the operator, that will require almost no practice or training, and also leaves the operator's hands free to operate other controls.
Huh, so there is, with physical servos moving a camera.
Any idea what latency numbers might look like? Seems unlikely the physical movement can be especially low latency.
I wonder if it wouldn't be easier / more comfortable for the worker to just get a low-poly reconstructed 3D rendering of the environment. That way at least they could move their head as much as they want and still get a read-time feed in their goggle without the usual VR tricks.
Because said low res rendering will remove very important cues that workers repairing stuff need to see, like potential things cracks in materials.
Responses so far say to optimize neck latency or use a joystick but why not use a 360 camera and handle it in reprojection. First pass could literally be a gopro or insta360 streaming to the headset and you could eventually integrate cameras and do the stitching yourself. The tech already exists and works, and it removes moving parts and actuators
Why not? There's no need for the neck to have more than 1~5 ms of lag, and about 5~10 ms photon lag even with a framebuffer involved (if you align the rolling shutter of the camera to the row-by-row multiplexed display, say OLED @ 240Hz, you should manage 4~5 ms).
> that little bit of lag and judder that turn VR into a vomit machine.
This doesn’t apply to everyone, so it’s just a matter of training people with more tolerance.
just over so it on the cameras so there isn't a latency because you're not actually moving the giant robot head
I like how the robot head motion is linked to the operator's head motion, such that the robot is able to nod its head near 2:15. I also like the feedback control near 0:35.
now start collecting user movement data with the visual recordings and we can eventually automate all the things
https://www.jinki.jp/ their website is banger
This is the most Japan thing I have seen here in a long time. Immediate throwback to all the cool mecha anime stuff...
I was about to say, isn’t this how the plot of Patlabor starts?
Patlabor is criminally underrated, in particular Patlabor II by Oshii. Often neglected given how popular his other stuff like GitS is but probably one of the best animated films when it comes to post WWII Japan's military/political questions.
Couldn’t agree more! It is remarkable how similar it feels to GITS 95
It seems that in many cases, Japanese robot designers prefer humanoid form over a more practical design. Watching the video linked by ano-ther, it seems that many of the demonstrated tasks could benefit from cameras that are placed more closely to the tool. Accurately placing parts, inspections, and the tree limb removal tasks are examples of this.
Ya it's not a human, you're not limited to binocular vision and can have multiple sets of cameras pretty easily of you wanted. Who knows what the designers are thinking.
I'm pretty sure they're thinking "giant robots are awesome!"
The ball-like robots from Gundam literally had a speech about them in Japanese parliament, so... :D
I doubt it. Boston Dynamics creates humanoid robots as well, and makes design decisions which aren't always maximally efficient, but no one makes such an infantilizing assumption about American engineers.
Maybe that kind of childish decision-making is why Japan is failing as a country.
Soulless comment of the year award material.
How many homeless fentanyl addicts you saw in your last trip to Osaka or Tokyo?
You're not making the point you think you are, or at least not remotely well.
Look at big picture stats to draw a conclusion instead of pointing out a pretty obscure US problem that has no bearing on the claim made.
They weren't kidding about it looking like an awesome 80's robot! Resembles Johnny 5 (from 1988): https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/robotics/images/4/49/Johnn...
Huh. Robot with denim jacket in Chromium, but placeholder image (mountain and sun icon) in Firefox. Can view in Firefox if cb query param is removed. Weird.
Weird, sorry about that queryparam I didn't see it there or would have stripped it.
I wasn't sure if it was justified, but was instantly sold when it nodded with its little head.
This has a video
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20240702_14/
This particular robot was revealed back in 2022. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31190875
This seems like a decent force multiplier, though I have to wonder how efficient the results are compared to just having a small crew of workers with a boom lift and a good toolbox. There are also the attention-splitting issues you can't cover with just one person in a cab, like marking off areas and directing traffic/pedestrians.
Their problem appears to be that they don't have that small crew to work with. Median age in Japan is already 48+ and creeping up.
Sounds like they need immigrants.
That would work for a bit, but at current trends that won't last long worldwide either.
84% of the global population are in low and middle income countries, and the vast majority of those people could have a significantly higher quality of living in a place like Japan if they were given the neccesary political protections.
6 billion people is not infinity people, and not all of those people are willing or able to move to a place like Japan to try their luck. But the idea that immigration is anywhere close to an end is preposterous.
Populations growth rates have fallen very fast around the world sometimes with in the span of one or two generations. The global fertility rate has fallen to 2.3. Sub Saharan Africa is one of the few places left with what we would consider large growth rates. Increased standards of living in these places we typically imported people from can quickly cut off this flow and put western nations at risk, whereas we thought this flow was unlimited.
Add to this the cost of living in western countries has spiraled out of control recently, the idea that "Just move to X, things will be better" is fading from what it used to be.
But the immigration seems to have triggered resurgence of fascism and populism worldwide. So while economically sustainable in theory it might be unsustainable for cultural reasons.
This is mainly due to blind trust in ideals instead of hard facts when it comes to immigration.
European countries who took in a lot of Mena people have issues because they believe naively in a form of laissez faire.
Culture can change. It's not an easy fight, but I would bet on economics beating culture in the long term.
and will Japan remain Japan once their population gets replaced with a vibrant stew of MENA immigrants, friend?
Has anywhere remained anywhere after a couple hundred years of colonization, conquest and migration? This weird idea that populations are, or should be, eternal and unchanging is pure fantasy.
will Japanese people approve of becoming a minority in their cities if you put it up for a vote?
I guess they will have to put old people at the controls, to overcome "the worker shortage in aging Japan"
What is it with media that attributes everything to "Japan"? Here we have a private company trying out a robot made by a much smaller private company, in Japan. It's not like the government of Japan is rolling out gundams across the nation.
The average Guardian reader never heard of that private company and definitely never heard of that much smaller private company. "Company in Japan" is also longer than simply "Japan". Plus there's still some latent orientalism at play.
But while the government of Japan likely isn't particularly involved in this project, states still like to claim tech advances (or gimmicks) happening in their country. There's a reason you often see politicians at opening ceremonies even when their government contributed nothing to what is being opened.
Well it is a japanese startup company working for JR-West.
Enormous humanoid robots for everything! Have you ever watched one of those videos where somebody makes a mini concrete building in a few days? I'd be cool to just scale that up, if it's possible, perhaps with faster-setting concrete or something.
Bad idea of the day: Perhaps you could "Ender's Game" it, to have a kid playing with legos control a giant robot, building a full-sized version of that set remotely. What could go wrong.
Huh, is this what it looks like when taxes are used appropriately?
Surely it'd be better to make specialised tools instead of a humanoid robot?
Human robots are super complex, and not fully utilised if the object was trimming trees.
It's very general purpose. Now it's used for trimming trees, but could potentially do a lot of other jobs.
Why does it have a swivelling head? I would have just mounted a 360 camera there. Then the operator can turn their head in any direction as fast as they want without the latency of waiting for a mechanical head to catch up.
This is likely safer - an onlooker can easily tell where the operator is looking, and therefore know if they are likely to be seen.
if the operator gets sick from the latency, even if they see someone they're more likely to have issues though
How would a 360 camera with stereoscopic vision work?
Good point, the sensor count exponentiates and the optics get a lot more complicated if you want a fully integrated system. Nothing on the market I know of but with where we are on the scaling curves now might be the time to try something like it - you could put together a basic proof of concept with a load of commercial sensor elements and wide angle lenses on a sphere. Eventually you can consolidate the central sensors and lenses into concentric hemispheres. You can reduce the data volume by narrowing the camera angles eventually too
Not sure there’s a market but maybe with VR stereo 360 becomes more valuable, who knows. Technologically doable though
(It would look like kind of like a dragonfly eye)
Mind blown. Can insects get depth perception with just one eye?
Will it hold died (sorry) sheet metal things softly and heavy things without dropping? How does it control the force it exerts?
Yes. Japan delivering the future we were promised.
This will especially useful for struggling rural Japanese train lines in the future. Nice.
This is so cool, leave it to Japan.
I've seen this movie before. It ends badly for the humans.
Strong echoes of the Onion's reporting on Dr. Lester Mordock's giant crabs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Uq9pp586AE
Hell yes. The age of Japanese mechs foretold by anime is upon us.
Is this how gundam started?
This is more Patlabor than Gundam.
So... how long until Daileon?
getting closer the the mecha dream day by day
> chainsaw
yes… YES
Robot? It’s more like a remote-control exoskeleton.
> remote-control exoskeleton
So like a robot?