LivingCreatures- The Beginning Of 'I, Robot?'

An Anonymous Reader writes "LivingCreatures.com has released several new photos of the humanoid robot platform that it developed for the USC Interaction Lab. The yet to be named robot is about the same size as an 18-month-old child and will serve as a human-robot interaction (HRI) testbed for studies involving imitation, learning, and the effects that interaction with humanoid robots has on children."

Comments

Re:Robot?

[freshmkr]

Robots are single function machines like the ones ford uses. The multipurpous ones shaped like a humanoid are called androids

I disagree.

I'm getting a graduate degree in robotics. My school has a few humanoids. We call them robots. We've got arms. We call those robots too. Same with the trashcan-shaped research robots, the Segway-platform robots, the AIBOs, the helicopters, the farm equipment, the cars, the blimp, and so on. All robots. Nobody here thinks the term "robot" refers to "single function machines", huge arms, industrial robots, or anything you find in an ordinary automated factory. It's a much more general category.

"Androids" are, I guess, a subset of "robots", but nobody here uses that term very much. I suspect it won't be very popular until we have robots that are more like Data.

Until then,
--Tom