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Japanese Robot on Diplomatic Tour

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the strange-ambassadors dept.

baquiano writes "Inaugurating 21st century diplomacy, Japan's Pime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is visiting Prague this week, accompanied by Honda's experimental humanoid robot, Asimo. According to this story, Asimo even attended the official dinner. Apparently, the Czech Prime Minister Spidla has often been criticized because he's too 'stiff' and 'robot-like.'" Uncomfortable moments aside, it's a fitting tribute, for as stated in the story, the Czech writer Karel Capek was the first to use the term robot.

4 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Re:"humanoid"? by Lacota · · Score: 3, Informative

    I think that by humanoid they mean the shape, two legs, two arms a head and body. They've used this term before in Star Trek and such. "I'm detecting three humanoids, two human, one klingon" etc.

    --
    It is not a god that would do evil biddings, but only a mortal and its limited knowledge would let such atrocities exist
  2. Wow by teko_teko · · Score: 3, Informative

    Just saw the videos of the robot climbing the stairs and walking backwards. It's awesome, didn't think something like this can be accomplished in the current time.

    When will they start making C3PO?

  3. Re:Isaac Asimov by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    The Three Laws of Robotics are:

    1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
    2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
    3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

    From Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D., as quoted in I, Robot. In Robots and Empire (ch. 63), the "Zeroth Law" is extrapolated, and the other Three Laws modified accordingly:

    A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

    Unlike the Three Laws, however, the Zeroth Law is not a fundamental part of positronic robotic engineering, is not part of all positronic robots, and, in fact, requires a very sophisticated robot to even accept it.

    Asimov claimed that the Three Laws were originated by John W. Campbell in a conversation they had on December 23, 1940. Campbell in turn maintained that he picked them out of Asimov's stories and discussions, and that his role was merely to state them explicitly.

    The Three Laws did not appear in Asimov's first two robot stories, "Robbie" and "Reason", but the First Law was stated in Asimov's third robot story "Liar!", which also featured the first appearance of robopsychologist Susan Calvin. (When "Robbie" and "Reason" were included in I, Robot, they were updated to mention the existence of the first law and first two laws, respectively.) Yet there was a hint of the three laws in "Robbie", in which Robbie's owner states that "He can't help being faithful, loving, and kind. He's a machine - made so." The first story to explicitly state the Three Laws was "Runaround", which appeared in the March 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.

    Information borrowed liberally from the Isaac Asimov FAQ.

  4. ASP != Microsoft by mortonda · · Score: 3, Informative
    You know, it is possible to have ASP pages written in perl, on a Linux server, with Apache and mod_perl? Take a look at Apache-ASP. It runs pretty smooth - I'm sure it could withstand a /.'ing.

    Of course, the site could very well be running Microsoft stuff... I was just pointing out that ASP doesn't necessarily imply it.