Enryu rescue robot in action

Robot venture Tmsuk yesterday held a press day to officially launch and demonstrate its massive tractor-with-arms rescue robot, Enryu. There is video of this all over the news sites, a few links to which are below. See Enryu rip the door off a perfectly good car! See Enryu pick up a steel girder with one hand! etc.

The impression we get from the videos is that it's rather a sluggish beast, though it turns out this is deliberate, and nothing to do with the operator's concentration being disrupted by the garish orange of his jumpsuit (he had apparently only had four hours practice, though). The original settings had the robot arms moving at the same pace as the operator's, resulting in a lot of dangerous high-speed flailing about that would have made it impossible to use at the scene of an accident. This is a creature that can lift half a ton with one arm, mind. The arms now track the operator's movements at a slower speed, though they do stop immediately the operator does.

Security, incidentally, is taken care of by a "rescue robot driver's license" card with a sound chip in it that plays an authorization tone to a receiver in the robot. The sound differs each time and is therefore supposedly unforgable.

Tmsuk plans to put the beast on sale sometime in 2004, for an estimated Y60 mn per unit.

Video:

Enryu! Rip door off! 1.5 MB MPEG, 464k WMV

Door stuck on Enryu hand! 1.8MB MPEG

Driving: 439k WMV

Remote cockpit: 368kb MPEG

Steel girder with one hand! 1.3MB MPEG

[Via PC Watch, ITmedia, and MYCOM PC Web (Japanese)]

Posted by aragoto at March 26, 2004 12:28 PM | TrackBack