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A Piece-By-Piece Guide to the Most Advanced Bots

Posted by michael on from the terminator dept.

XopherMV cuts-and-pastes from Wired: "In an article from Wired, 'Consider the progress of just the past 15 years. There are now robots that can get around on two legs, participate in simple conversations, and manipulate objects in rudimentary ways. Of course, we don't yet have a bot that can navigate downtown Manhattan, tie its shoelaces, or even tell a chair from a desk. MIT's Cynthia Breazeal holds out hope that within five years, robots will cross a critical threshold, becoming partners rather than tools - in other words, we'll have friends, not appliances.'" Reader ptorrone adds: "In Los Angeles, CA at the Century Plaza Hotel for the 4Site conference, our favorite robot vacuum/military supplier, iRobot, showed off the tactical mobile robot! The 'Tactical mobile Robot' has its own brochure and site: www.packbot.com. The rad thing about this platform is its skateboard design, where it appears to support various plug-in modules. Here are some photos of the packbot!"

4 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Hmmm by fiannaFailMan · · Score: 3, Interesting
    ..our favorite robot vacuum/military supplier, iRobot, showed off the tactical mobile robot!
    I wonder if they got the idea from Asimov or Apple.
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  2. Friends not appliances? by carcosa30 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That's an improvement. The way it is now, most of us have appliances instead of friends, and that looks like a growing trend.

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    Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
  3. The "R Prize" by artlu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Some rich mogul should setup a $10,000,000 purse for the first company that can make a robot which can walk, understand commands and act them out, and not bump into an item and fall over all for under $2000. ie: go downstairs and get me a soda, go make the bed, whatever...

    Maybe something like that would spur some more activity into the robot sector.

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    artlu.net
  4. When Bots talk to bots by tmk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Everybody knows chatbots and the Turing-Test.

    But what happens, when a chatbot talks to another chatbot? Take a look.