Tai Chi Robots 223
dknight writes "It seems that Chinese scientists are currently developing a robot which is capable of doing tai chi. The robot is being developed by the Beijing University of Science and Engineering, and is touted to be a great breakthrough in worker safety, as these robots could be used to perform dangerous work. They are supposedly able to sense changes in the slope of the earth around them (hills, etc.) and balance themselves out."
Credible? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'd only point out that. . . (Score:4, Informative)
It's all about taking the bad guy's force and using it against himself.
Re:Credible? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Credible? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm don't know what you searched under, but Google returns these results. [google.com]
Some [go2net.com] others [geek.com] have picked up on it, there are some loose [yahoo.com] translations [elcomercioperu.com.pe], but no real original articles. No pictures either.
Yeah, this looks a little vaporous. I hope not,the technology is certainly feasible, but I'm a little skeptical of uncorroborated articles in national chinese news sites. The japanese, however, have a robot [theinquirer.net] that looks promising.
Robots will never do Tai Chi (Tajiquan) - Why? (Score:2, Informative)
Robots can't do Tai Chi, they can only *mimic* Tai Chi movement...why?
Tai Chi (also called 'Taijiquan' - meaning "body as fist") is a legitimate martial art that has been bastardized in China and the West; it has also become something of a New Age phenonenon.
Why can't a robot do leigitimate Tai Chi? Because training in authentic Tai Chi involves exercises that essentially, over time, 1) dramatically retrain muscle fascia; 2) develop enormous leg strength in the practitioner (necessary; 3) teach the practitioner that *all* movement is controlled from the center (this is where the New Age people get it wrong, as we're talking about *literal* control from the area - front to back - just below the belly button (dantien). This latter quality is what's hard to imagine until one meets a practitioner who has it right. There simply aren't many of these people left, and those who are left tend to be very restrained about teaching everything openly.
Here are some good, authentic places to start - everything below is the 'real deal':
http://www.sixharmonies.org/
http://www.neijia.com/
Others to look for:
Chen Xiao Wang
Chu Tian Cai
Chen Zheng Lei
Wang Xian
Chen Qingzhou
Anything done by any of the above is the 'real deal'. There are also other good practitioners in other 'styles' of taiji. The above group is form Chen Style, the first Taiji style.
Zhu Tian Cai
The reason that Tai Chi exercises are performed slowly is to train the body to move, resting on very strong legs, and allowing the "center" to "leverage" the ground for striking and other martial moves. It's virtually impossibelto describe what this quality 'feel's like. There's no mystery to it however, as it can be trained to various levels depending on the physical ability and dedication of the practitioner.
Unfortunately, there are too few authentic Tai Chi practitioners out there who are teaching the "real deal".
Good Tai Chi practice doesn't have to be martial, **but the quality and basics of correct movement HAVE to be present** for it to be called legitimate Tai Chi.
Simply doing Tai Chi 'forms' fluidly is not doing Tai Chi.
In sum, the real physical dynamics and requirements of Tai Chi cannot be simulated by a robot. A robot may *mimic* moves that look like Tai Chi, but that's all.
Here's some videos (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.tokyodv.com/news/RoboDex2002SDR-3XSo
More Info (direct translation from CCTV) (Score:3, Informative)
Taichi Robot story last night. It has a nice photo. The text is in chinese. I don't want to spend too much time for translation. So I just add a few extra points. The university names are my direct translation. They are unlikely to be the correct spelling... I am not a native Mandarin speaker.
I am not sure when/how did you do the search. I find [google.co.nz]
many links related to the posted story, although the content is more or less the same in everyone. It is not at all surprising. The reporters duplicated the official press release from englishdaily.com.cn. In a sense, Chinese is similar to Japanese. Many of these news are not for "export". They just publish the stories in their own language. You really cannot say it does not exist until you search in their own language (if you can...)