TU Darmstadt replacing Sony Aibo
04 Jul 2007
For participating in the Robocup researchers at the institute for simulation and systems optimisation at the Technical University of Darmstadt were using Sony AIBO robots in their Robocup team called the Dribbling Dackels. Sony has discontinued the AIBO project some time ago and finally Oscar von Stryk and his team at TU Darmstadt decided to develop a successor for Sony’s robot dog. The robot is going to be released on the market end of this year but depending on the demand initially it it will probably only be available for Robocup teams. It took six months to develop the robot in collaboration with the Hajime Research Institute (Osaka, Japan) which helped out with the mechanical part.
A new web-page by TU Darmstadt gives some more information on the robot:
- the size is 40x30x25 cm^3 and the weight is 2.5 kg
- it has 15 rotary joints (3 for each leg, 3 for the neck)
- the on-board camera has a resolution of 640x480 pixel with up to 90 frames/second (I wonder what camera this is)
- a 500 MHz AMD-Geode-LX800 runs Linux or Windows onboard and offers VGA, 2 USB, LAN, and a memory-card interface
- it is equiped with WLAN as well and has a mini display and four buttons
- it is powered by a Lithium-ion polymer battery
For designing the casing a professional design company was employed (Gotha Design). More information on the robot will be available starting from July 7th on the website http://www.thenewrobot.com/.