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C-3PO Joins R2 in the Robot Hall of Fame
dev_alac writes "The BBC is
reporting that
C-3PO has been inducted into Carnegie Mellon's
Robot Hall of Fame, along with
Asimo,
Shakeyboy -- "the first mobile robot to reason about its actions," Astroboy, and of course, Robby the Robot of Forbidden Planet fame. There, he joins such other legendary mechanical beings as
Hal 9000, R2-D2, and
Sojourner." Update: 06/20 08:27 GMT by T : Yep, it's a near-dupe of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story linked the other day.
Probably because Arthur C Clarke has been denying this for years.
No - "Asteroid "(5020) Asimov" is named in his honor, as is Honda's humanoid prototype robot ASIMO."
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Shakey's name came about because his drive motor didn't do continuous accelleration. I'm not sure whether the limitation was in the mechanics or in the control logic, but the effect was that his wheels would start and stop almost instantaneously, and the rest of him -- having a fair bit of mass -- would naturally wobble a bit when transitioning to a new direction or speed.
(My father's team at SRI built Shakey, so I got to meet the robot for the first time when I was about 6 years old at some sort of SRI open house event.)
Shakey is retired now, and spends most of his days reminiscing from within a large glass display case at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
I play Nerd-Folk!
You forget the 0th law from late in the Foundation series: A robot may not harm humanity or through inaction allow humanity to come to harm. The first law is subject to the zeroth law.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
And for those of you scratching your head and wondering what the hell is up with a 0th law - this is directly analogous to the laws of Thermodyanmics (remember - Asimov had a PhD in Chemistry). The chemists formulated the laws of thermodynamics and then *later* came up with a more important one that overrode them. Hence, the Zeroth law of thermodynamics
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
While Marvin is a lot of fun as is the entire series, I do not think
he particulary fills the criteria of this Robot Hall of Fame.
- These are the fictional robots that have inspired us to create real robots that are productive, helpful, and entertaining. These robots have achieved worldwide fame as fictional characters and have helped form our opinions about the functions and values of real robots. -
I voted for R. Daneel Olivaw on their site. Easily one of the most awesome creations of Asimov ever. It's the main character in several of his books, not just a sidekick. - Robots of Dawn, Robots and Empire.
If you never read them you should read the series:
Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, and the two above mentioned titles.
In this series Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics and the invention of "the Zeroed law" by Daneel and Giskard have been a real contribution in the way I think about Robots. Types like Data from Star Trek are in my view heavily inspired by this work.
Engelberger, who built the first industrial robot, called Unimate, in 1958, attributes his long-standing fascination with robots to his reading of [Asimov's] 'I, Robot' when he was a teenager, and Engelberger later invited Asimov to write the foreword to his robotics manual.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor