Office Robot Wars for real?

Hot from E3 (from where Neowin are soon to report) is news that you can build your own battle laptop.

Grabbing a brewski from the fridge is just one of the real-world tasks promised by Evolution Robotics, a Pasadena, Calif.-based company that promises a popular but practical approach to robotics. The company is at the Electronics Entertainment Expo this week demonstrating a series of "personal robot systems" that can transform an average laptop PC into an intelligent robot. The basic kit includes a rolling platform to mount the laptop on, a Webcam for capturing visual data and software to run on the laptop.

Company Chairman Bill Gross said the real breakthrough with the company's software is real-time processing of visual data. The Evolution software can interpret images at a rate of five frames per second, matching data captured by the camera with a library of visual references. Instead of executing pre-determined routines, as most robots do, the Evolution system can respond to its environment almost instantly.

Amazingly...Program the software to recognize a beer bottle and a refrigerator, for example, and next time you're running on empty, you just need to wave a bottle in front of the laptop's camera and request a refill.

News source: ZDNet News