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.

Comments

DUPE

[dewpac]

Less than 48 hours ago!

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/18/1735 22 3&mode=thread&tid=137&tid=216

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Oh dear!

[ShatteredX]

Goodness gracious me!

Obligatory Simpsons Quote

[Metallic Matty]

"... versus the gay robots from Star Wars."

C-3PO: "R2 help me!"
R2: "beep beep beep"
C-3PO: "I hate you, you're so boring!"

marvin?

[abscondment]

I'm holding out for Marvin from the Hitchhiker's Guide. Brain the size of a planet and all that jazz--how could you not?

Re:marvin?

[RogerWilco]

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.

Re:marvin?

[RogerWilco]

Yes it is, R. Daneel does make a small apearance in Foundation and Earth, tying the Foundation series in with the Robot series. I like the first three novells of either series best,
- Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation
- Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, Robots of Dawn.

These books are almost 50 years old and as readable as ever, they rate second only to Tolkien's work for me.

In his later Foundation novels he ties the earlier stories together:
Prelude to Foundation, Foundation and Earth.
I am not sure if that makes th stories stronger.

HAL - IBM

[eight]

Too bad they don't mention that the HAL acronym actually comes from "decreasing" each letter of "IBM" with one.

Re:HAL - IBM

[91degrees]

Probably because Arthur C Clarke has been denying this for years.

Re:HAL - IBM

[Flingles]

Arthur C Clarke must have a pretty bad idea of the alphabet if he denies that one. Did you mean, he denies making the name that way on purpose?

Re:HAL - IBM

[nacturation]

Arthur C Clarke must have a pretty bad idea of the alphabet if he denies that one.

You can also say that IBM comes from taking the letters HAL and adding 1 to each letter. However, given that IBM wasn't created in this fashion, it's easily denied. Similarly, Clarke has stated that he didn't create HAL by taking the IBM letters and subtracting 1 from each letter. Yes, you can *derive* HAL this way, but Clarke didn't.

Re:HAL - IBM

[kfg]

And of course we all know what we get when we increment each letter of VMS by one?

Yes, that's right, "BSOD".

KFG

Re:HAL - IBM

[foidulus]

Or you can derive WNT by adding one to each of VMS.
It would be more of a coincedence, except(from wikipedia):
"Microsoft hired a group of developers from Digital Equipment Corporation to build NT, and many elements reflect earlier DEC experience with VMS and RSX-11. "
Seems like less of a coincedence when you take that into consideration :P

Re:Ummm, C3PO was fictional?

[Walt Dismal]

Christ, next you're going to tell me that there is no Captain Kirk?

C3PO and R2D2 included separately!?

[91degrees]

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.

Re:C3PO and R2D2 included separately!?

[serutan]

Exactly. The Robot Hall of Fame is a media event generator, like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, etc. It's kind of interesting that you can create one of these Hall of Fame institutions out of thin air, and it somehow automatically becomes the authority in its field. I'm surprised nobody's created a Geek Hall of Fame yet.

Re:Coincidence?

[techno-vampire]

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.

Re:Coincidence?

[Raul654]

No - "Asteroid "(5020) Asimov" is named in his honor, as is Honda's humanoid prototype robot ASIMO."

More about c-3po

[afriguru]

Sites dedicated to C-3PO (see-threepio) are listed in the following places:

• The Yahoo Directory
• The Open Directory project

Dissappointed

[p0]

i still do not see Al Gore on the list...

Finally, they broke the 'robo' barrier

[gad_zuki!]

Yeah, you know what 'robo' means. Keep reaching for that rainbow!

"Shakeyboy"??? That's SHAKEY THE ROBOT to you, sir

[GlenRaphael]

Shakey's a friend of mine, and I think he'd be insulted to be called "Shakeyboy". His full name is "Shakey the robot", or just "Shakey" for short.

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.

Re:Coincidence?

[AuMatar]

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.

Re:Coincidence?

[Raul654]

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

Radio Shack Armatron

[KidSock]

I think the Radio Shack Armatron should be nominated if for no other reason because it was so accessible. And it was genuinely fun to play with -- albeit a little noisey!

C3PO is not gay

[gfody]

hes metro sexual

C-3PO?

[nkh]

Thanks for the link to C-3PO in the article, I forgot who he was...

Re:"Shakeyboy"??? That's SHAKEY THE ROBOT to you,

[Anonymous Coward]

Right on. "Boy" is a demeaning epithet to _any_ Robo-American.

Futurama

[keadie]

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!

Mad Magazine rip off

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mad magazine parody of Star Wars was the first to feature a gay C3PO ("O Barstool (R-2 parody) the design of this planet is to die for!" with R2-D2 bleeps response translating into (Great! It's not bad enough were stranded on this desert planet but now I'm stuck with a fag robot!" If you read Mad you know A LOT of Simpson material comes from Mad Magazine. Especially the marginal gags.

Re:Ummm, C3PO was fictional?

[duffel]

There isn't. He died on Generations.

Re:C3PO is not gay

[Anonymous Coward]

A metrosexual has sex with cities. Godzilla was the first.

Re:Ummm, C3PO was fictional?

[aussie_a]

Your heading suggests that you aren't too sure if C3PO was indeed fictional. I advise you wait until your sure of something before posting it, because we here at Slashdot have a standard. That standard dictates you be 110% sure your right? I think that's the standard anyway.

Re:There was more than one Robbie

[AndroidCat]

Robbie fell on hard times after his movie career burned out. He did have a few guest shots on shows like Lost In Space, but word got around fast that you couldn't depend on him. One day he'd be fine, the next he'd be lurching around the set shouting "Crush! Kill! Destroy!"

Rather sad. He never even made it into late night TV commercials.

Ahem...

[Cyno01]

Sir, those series in question, do not, and have never existed and I suspect your high on dope. Please refrain from ever mentioning The Ewok Adventures(TM), or Droids Animated Adventures(TM), as neither exist, also, please refrain from mentioning a certain Holiday Special(TM), that doesn't exist either, ever again.

Sincerely,
George Lucas(TM)