Do you recognize this robot?
by Marc Perton 
posted Mar 10th 2006 at 8:50PM
Remember that Hitachi surveillance robot
we checked out a couple of days ago? Well, William Kennedy of MobileRobots in Amherst, NH, took a close look at it and
thought he noticed something familiar. No, not the dome, telescoping arm or bright blue body. It was the wheel rims
that set him off. According to Kennedy, those gold wheel rims are a dead ringer for rims that were custom made for his
company's Pioneer DX bot back in 2002. That bot has been sold in Japan by a company called Revast, which has sold
robots to -- you guessed it -- Hitachi. Kennedy thinks that under that dome lurks one of his Pioneer models, purloined
and stuffed into a new shell to disguise its true identity. He even created a composite image showing how nicely
Pioneer would fit inside Hitachi's bot. So, is this a case of robo-napping? Or just a frustrated inventor with a taste
for tacky tires? Unless someone is willing to crack the dome and peer inside, we may never know.[Via the Raw Feed]
Filed under: Robots
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Othello @ Mar 10th 2006 9:10PM
I feel bad for that poor little robot. Torn between two entities claiming to be it's parents... Please, won't anyone think of the bots?
100 ipod movies @ Mar 10th 2006 9:32PM
Interesting analysis but its possible he might be wrong.
3rdsun @ Mar 10th 2006 9:45PM
me thinks it is a dead ringer
GM Mastermind @ Mar 10th 2006 10:37PM
Bring in CSI, It's a case of stolen identity!
Krono6 @ Mar 11th 2006 9:47AM
You know, if this were Futurama, I'm sure that SOMEONE would break out with "JERRY JERRY JERRY!!"
tempusmaster @ Mar 11th 2006 12:11PM
Mr. Kennedy's concerns may, in the long term, turn out to be valid - time will tell.
Just by way of background, the Hitachi press release (in Japanese, of course) doesn't make any specific claims about the robot platform they used nor does it claim that they designed the entire robot. They do talk about the software and application that they developed, which might indicate that it was layered on top of a commercially available robot. They were scheduled to present a paper at a technical conference here in Japan earlier this week, hence the timing of the press release.