Fact or Publicity Stunt?
 

The new book by Rowland Samuel, "Men of Metal" tells the story of unusual occurrances around Oxford England involving a "robotic being" helping motorists who are in trouble. Mr Rowland , a journalist, investigates the occurrances and makes a convincing case that a certain Colin Mayhew Phd., formerly of the mini division of BMW and a robotics afficiondo, has created robotic beings out of the mini IC engine, and offers proof, among other things, with Dr. Mayhew's web site.

Publicity stunt to sell the book? Check out the site. Especially the "car stopping" video. Special effects? You engineering types can peruse the drawings.

What do you think?

www.r50rd.co.uk/research/internal/v2i/engin/

I'm no expert...but I don't really buy it. Especially the car stopping exercise. I know that "the guy in his garage" can always come up with something ground breaking but look at Honda with their little "robotic beings", they've been working on this for ages now and they're still goofy, although thoroughly incredible in their own right. Something just smells fishy about all of this to me though I would love for it to be true, it's very cool.

=) Tell me why he has wheels spinning on his shoulders.

Good CG!

I believe the drawings indicate the wheels are used to store the kinetic energy needed to initiate arm and leg movement

The book is pretty wild- even a blurred photo that a motorist took of a robotic hand on her windshield!

The shadows on the videos (esp the 'light tracking' one where he stands between the robot's legs) are very suspicious...

Its a transformer, lol! Anyway, the dexterity test looks plenty realistic to me. I mean, think about how many assembly line machines just like that there must be. The distressed vehicle recognition test and tracking test could easily be a video overlay. On the other hand, shape recognition software does exist, as do bullet tracking cameras. I see what you mean about the conspicuous light tracking test. But the thing that really gives it away is the car stopping test. The level of reflection is way too clear on its chest plate. It is almost mirror like. I feel that the motion is also just a tad to fluid for the parts involved. Still, its is done well enough to make the trained eye of someone like myself who has done some CG second guess. I think, though, that higher resolution video would totally give it away.

No way, it's fake. This is coming from a CG artist, and I can tell you that the arm dex test at least is fully CG. Just watch the lighting on the arm compared to the shadows.