Fuji Soft's new humanoid is powered by Atom and Ubuntu

The world needs humanoids, and Fuji Soft is heeding that call. It just unveiled its new humanoid line at the ever-popular All Japan Robot Tournament, and while the robot doesn't have a model name yet, one of the delightful personalities pictured above is named Sakura-Chan and both seem pretty keen on a bit of robo-Sumo. The mobility and capabilities of the bots seems pretty standard, with an LED visor for facial expressions, speech recognition and a camera for taking in this odd carbon-based world it finds itself in. What's more interesting is the Robovie-style off-the-shelf parts inside: Atom CPU, Ubuntu OS and WiFi, all of which are compatible with the Eclipse development environment. The robot should be hitting the streets (of Japan) in early 2010 for a supposedly competitive price. Video is after the break.

[glidej Posted Dec 21st 2009 10:00PM]

i'll take two! I'll finally be able to start that Daft Punk cover band in my basement.

[Eugene Action Posted Dec 22nd 2009 4:28AM]

@glidej Mix Master... Mix Faster!

[FnuGk Posted Dec 21st 2009 10:17PM]

i just wish i knew what they where saying :P

[Blackstar Posted Dec 21st 2009 10:34PM]

@FnuGk

He's saying:

"I pity the fool, and I will destroy any robot who tries to take what I got!

[Vitasoydrink Posted Dec 21st 2009 10:46PM]

in like 50 years, our kids or grand kids will be like wtf is this

[Solipsism Posted Dec 21st 2009 11:22PM]

uh... what does Eclipse have to do with anything? It works under Ubuntu, yes, but that's not really some fantastic surprise...

[JS Posted Dec 21st 2009 11:45PM]

It has to be able to get me stuff from the fridge while I'm watching a movie or it's useless. Hmm... maybe if it could make me a sandwich too.

[ethana2 Posted Dec 22nd 2009 12:05AM]

Remember that make-me-a-sandwich is separated by dashes, not spaces. If you try it with spaces it'll give you a "make: *** No rule to make target `me'. Stop." error. Also remember that make-me-a-sandwich isn't part of a default ubuntu installation, so you'll want to install it with the Software Center first.

Whatever you do don't run it with sudo, or it'll kill your entire family if it can't find an alternative source of meat for the sandwich. If it doesn't work the first time check your file permissions. make-me-a-sandwich is also available for Mac OS X via fink, but that version defaults to running to the store and buying random fancy ingredients for it, so make sure you pass it sane arguments.

[domopod Posted Dec 22nd 2009 12:17AM]

ironman? and r2d2? together?

[Shane Posted Dec 22nd 2009 7:16AM]

Should be powered by Android... (groan)

[uzusan Posted Dec 22nd 2009 7:20AM]

The choice of Ubuntu in this case is brilliant, considering ubuntu's slogan is "Linux for Human Beings" :)