When Honda’s ASIMO died, he left a gap in our hearts formed like a four-foot-tall spacesuit-looking bipedal robotic. Now Toyota has tried to fill that gap with some jock ‘bot who performs basketball effectively sufficient to win a Guinness World File, and I’m right here to say: We will let you know tried to swap out the goldfish, and we’re not falling for it.
Toyota’s basketbot, a virtually seven-foot-tall shooter named CUE6, lacks ASIMO’s childlike marvel. This robotic is a grown grownup, able to grownup duties like throwing a basketball adequate {that a} beer firm places you in a guide that you simply paid them to be in. It’s simply not the identical.
Sure, a guide you paid them to be in. Guinness guide gross sales aren’t as profitable as they was, so the corporate now sells data, taking in five-figure sums to seek out data that people or teams may break, or just inventing new classes. There’s at this level no clear solution to decide a real report from a bought one, making all of them a bit nugatory, and now Toyota is in the identical hallowed web pages as all kinds of world dictators. Yay!
Toyota’s robotic threw a basketball over 80 toes, which is admittedly greater than I may ever do. Extra attention-grabbing than that, although, is that the bot could make changes on the fly by utilizing machine studying to slender in on a hoop. That’s a genuinely attention-grabbing feat, however one which doesn’t even seem on the Guinness report web page. It may possibly throw a basketball adequate to be within the guide you pay to be in, and I assume that’s value celebrating. However it would by no means exchange ASIMO, that precocious little child of a robotic that I grew up alongside. The goldfish is lifeless, and the brand new one is not any substitute.