I was at the Natural History Museum - Smithsonian when the smaller carnivore was there (looks kinda like some kind of Raptor to me, not sure the exact species.) My two nieces (5 and 7) were FREAKING OUT lol. They loved it. Who ever was controlling it you could see clearly, though they had black stockings on to obscure the legs better.

But very cool, very lifelike. The fog works good to cover the large structure between the big dino's legs for stability.

Jim Henson has a brilliant way of performing Rowlf, where his hands always are at the right place on the piano with regards to the music instead of the thoughless hammering you often see when puppets or animated characters play piano. This attention to detail permeates the Muppet Show, and makes the muppets so much more lifelike.

First of all, that completely blew my mind away. I am so impressed.

Some of that though was because of how loosely the term robot i suppose can be used. When i was watching the video i thought it was completely autonomous, but then at the end it showed the remote control.

So it is slightly misleading to call it a robot, as calling it as such had led me to think it was using sensors to detect the pop and the claws control was based on sensors. At the end of the day though, the actuators is the impressive part of this contraption, as it is so fluid and lifelike; the sensors i'm sure this person has enough talent to put on there as well and make it truly a robot.

Regardless, it is an amazing feat of engineering.

@ westy.
My understanding of it, is they have modelled the physics of the piano keystrokes, and are taking real-time sampling data based on the force and duration you depress the key to generate a lifelike note, as opposed to the traditional generic sampling of a single note per key.

Ideally it should give a more full sound, with more control over how the note is played, rather than just force > volume as per traditional digital pianos.

This piano has no strings in it, as it is a digital piano...as such, its just some keys, with some springs / dampening to make it "feel" like a real piano, with input to a cpu which synthesizes each note in turn.

So Friggen TRUE. I constantly stop and say to my wife 'My god we have it good', I mean really, I'm sitting here, working from home (via a secure vpn), looking out the window at our large garden where our chickens are routing around for bugs, we have amazing kids, we have work, a house... LIFE IS GREAT. And yet we can find things to bitch about.

You really do have to just chill the frig out and stop having this sense of entitlement.

I am one of the most techy people I know, I understand how heaps of things work and yet I still am one of those who more than others stops and is amazed at the things I'm using (wireless internet, mobile phones, pcs with lifelike graphics etc.)... Get some perspective people and enjoy life for what it is. Amazing.

Alright, reading the comments this time...

Spoco2: Really? I mean, really...? Few things anger me as much as religion, but this witch hunt against video games is really angering up my blood. The TV is just as bad as any videogame a five-year-old could ever play (hmm, probably, apart from manhunt), so you'd have to exclude that from the kid as well.

Videogames are not decidedly bad for children, because it's not really been proved on way or the other. A lot of people have claimed results, but have as far as I know, always been biased be some sort of lawsuit (hello america, fuck you!).

I believe (and ugh, that word cuts my heart) that videogames don't hurt anything at all, and I base that on my own personal experience. I may not have been exposed to as life-like games as todays youth, but I don't think that makes that much of a difference. (Again, movies are much more lifelike than games).

This game is very little different from playing "cops and robbers" or "cowboys and indians" as it was called, when I was young... (uuuhhh, PC-police coming to my town.. I'm so scared)

wait, so it's a robot camcorder that's playing soccer? with lifelike hands and arms?

Seems unbelievable and fascinating that he is able to paint lifelike portraits of famous people.

Out of curiosity, MarineGunrock, which one did you want to buy?

"They're very static."

I remember a FARK thread about Realdolls -- one dude posted a pic of a very lifelike doll; at first glance it really did look like an attractive woman, reclining in a bikini. He signed off with

"/would hit it
//and then feel really weird".

Haha "Shrink me up some biatches" thats so quote for the day. This guy did a pretty good job with photoshop. Still you look at the end result and something just looks wrong. Its lifelike and yet something about makes me feel disturbed. Like the uncanny valley effect.

Pretty cool that they can walk around on their own... but:
* Shite sound effects, the green one's voice sounds like a camera taking a photo.
* Wibbly wobbly heads... as they walk their upper body shimmers and shakes around like nothing else. Needs some dampening and decoupling from the legs to make it seem more lifelike.

Still, pretty darn cool nun-theless.

How incredibly lifelike - - - - -PAUSE- - - - - ,NOT!
Ok, so the legs were ok, but Whats up with those gunshot sounds for the steps? And why did they make jar-jar instead of one of the other cool ones?

Clip from the 1995 colorized version of the 1962 war film epic The Longest Day produced by Daryl F Zanuck, featuring an early appearance from a young Sean Connery, right before the success of Dr. No, also features Kenneth More.

* During the filming of the landings at Omaha Beach, the American soldiers appearing as extras didn't want to jump off the landing craft into the water because they thought it would be too cold. Robert Mitchum, who played General Norm Cota, finally got disgusted with them and jumped in first, at which point the soldiers had no choice but to follow his example.

* The Rupert paradummies used in the film were far more elaborate and lifelike than those actually used for the decoy parachute drop (Operation Titanic) which were actually just canvas or burlap sacks filled with sand. In the real operation six Special Air Service soldiers jumped with the dummies and played recordings of loud battle noises to distract the Germans.

* At $10,000,000, this film was the most expensive black-and-white film made until 1993, when Schindler's List was released. (Source: Turner Classic Movies).

* The bagpiper is the same person who participated in the real assault on D-Day.

According to the material at the presentation, most of the subjects are prisoners that donated their bodies to science, so there were few female subjects. According to the website the bodies came from China but due to privacy concerns no information about the subjects is available. One presentation was a pregnant woman and her child, where both died during delivery and permission had been obtained to allow the body to be used for this exhibit. There was also portions of the human body to illustrate various maladies. The process was actually created to create a more lifelike method of preserving tissues for medical instruction then bottled in preservation solution. They even had demonstrations of the process. When I saw it, it took up three floors of the California Science Museum.