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Honda's ASIMO A Few Steps Closer To Human
Rauchenator points to an article on Yahoo! about "the new enhanced Honda Asimo which now can gracefully walk down stairs, respond to human commands and even work like a receptionist (Sit there). The Honda site even has videos showcasing the robot doing its thing. The article points out that the robot makes celebrity-size salaries when put on display, too."
No you fool. It doess't earn any fookin salary. HOnda are planning to rent it out instead for outrageous sums so that they can recover some of the money they invested. With the present economic situation, I don't see any company shelling out megabucks so that they can have ASIMO moving to-n-fro in some exhibition stall....
Aside, does anyone know why Honda got into ASIMO rpoject at the first place. My guess is that they wanted to give their engineers experience in electric motors, hydraulics, and/or system programming....typical Honda....can't wait for 2004 NSX....ye gods...
However the word "Robot" pre-dates Asimov.
Czech playwright Karol Capek wrote "Rossum's Universal Robots" in 1921, deriving the word 'robot' from a Czech word for forced labour.
This is where our current defintion of robot comes from, and all its derivations.
Incidentally, the first entertainment to feature 'robots' had them rebelling against their human masters.
"Information wants to be paid"
are the amusement companies going to just strut the robot around as is for that much money? or are they going to put their character costumes over it.
i can see it now, "Mickey, take a picture with me."
"What did you say?" while picking up it's arm and twiddling its fingers.
The flash goes off and it fritzes out circa Itchy and Scratchy land.
And are Asimov's laws really what the developers are going to follow presently or in the future? The major funding comes from the military and giant corporations, and we all know they want killing machines or mindless drones. So we have soldiers and slaves, it just doesn't seem like a good future.
also, a mini-discussion @ e2 about the laws: here
xavii aka bob
The humanoid Isamu robot is powered by RTLinux. Does anyone know if this is also true for Honda's Asimo? What's the relation between the two projects?