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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.
Too bad they don't mention that the HAL acronym actually comes from "decreasing" each letter of "IBM" with one.
But.. they're a double act! You can't have one without the other. It would be like putting Stan Laurel on his own in a comedy greats display.
Asimov claimed, later, that Campbell actually gave his three laws their form. Campbell pointed out that Asimov had been using a set of three, never specified laws for robots in his stories and gave them their format: A robot may not harm a human being or through inaction allow one to come to harm, a robot must obey any order given by a human being unless it would violate the First Law, and a robot must protect its existence unless by so doing it would violate the First or Second Law. The most interesting thing about them is how they're structured, to make each law subordinate to any earlier law, making the First Law override everything else. Over the years, Asimov came up with an astonishing number of ways for these laws to create problems that could only be solved by humans.
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I hope they put bender in there soon I mean, what other robot can get a 5'clock rust shadow from not drinking enough beer!