Slashdot Mirror
Flexible Sensors Make Robot Skin
Roland Piquepaille writes "In recent years, lots of efforts have been made to give robots the ability to hear and see. But what about the sense of touch? Unlike us, robots don't have sensitive skin. But this is about to change. By using organic, or plastic, field-effect transistors as pressure sensors deposited on a flexible material, researchers at the University of Tokyo have created an artificial skin which will give robots the sense of touch. The prototype has a density of 16 sensors per square centimeter, far from the 1,500 of our fingertips. When this density increases and when the problem of the reliability of this kind of transistors is solved, the researchers say this artificial skin will also be used for car seats or gym carpets. Expect to see them in four or five years. More details and a picture of a robotic hand using organic transistors as pressure sensors."
you think he has permission to repost other peoples content for commercial gain through advertising ? real news sites actually get permission first or *pay writers* for content or do you think AP CNN etc just do it for free ?
slashdot links to the original articles where possible, they dont copy and paste them here as articles cos if they did they would get their asses sued into oblivion, copyright does apply to writings and photographs especially when exploiting content for commercial gain
Why do you think I am trolling? It's a genuine question.
As for the other posts, I didn't make them. If I wanted to post something like that, I would have put it in my original post rather than make separate posts. No doubt you are aware that more than one person can post as AC. I fail to see what's so bad if I was responsible for posting them though.
You are right in saying that he doesn't plagiarise more than any news site; I used the wrong word mistakenly - plagiarism is when you claim the article to be your own, which he is not.
The correct term is copyright infringement, and his methods certainly differ from other news sites. The news sites that post articles verbatim have prexisting agreements to do so with organisations like the Associated Press. The news sites that do not have such arrangements quote a small portion as provided for by fair use and link to the full article. Piquepaille, on the other hand, quotes far more than that - enough for me to suspect it would be very difficult for him to claim fair use in court.
Fair use, in case you are unaware, relies on a number of different factors, including the amount quoted and the nature of the duplication. Since he is copying for commercial gain (note the adverts on the website) and copying a very substantial portion of the original articles, I can only reasonably conclude he is infringing upon copyrights.
I have been known to make a few anti-Roland posts in the past. When I first started paying attention to Roland's posts, I couldn't understand why many people hated him, either. But, now, I understand why. On one hand, Maybe part of it is overexposure. However, I think more of it has to do with his neverending spam and questionable approach to copyright law.
If you look here, you will see the T's & C's for using information from the source of Roland's story. If you read the fine print, you will see a sentence that reads "Use of this material for commercial purposes without explicit, written permission from Technology Research News, LLC is strictly prohibited".
Roland's blog is purely a commercial enterprise. He uses the ads on his blog to collect money. By copying and pasting entire paragraphs from the Technology Research News article, he is breaking the copyright.
Of course, maybe he does have 'explicit written permission'. But I doubt it. Why do I say this? Look at how he writes the article. Where is isn't copying and pasting, he is purely summarizing what was originally written by anybody else. Now, look at this link. Look at how he writes. No new information. he just collects information from dozens of web sites and either plagiarizes those sites or points to them through his blog. He must be collecting dozens of RSS feeds and picking and choosing what he thinks are the best.
Even worse, some of his posts are nothing but advertisements for products.
Now, let us say Roland DOES have legal explicit permission from all of those sites to copy and paste articles for his personal profit. I could live with that, IF he was adding additional insight into technology. Unfortunately, he isn't. His blog adds nothing to society.
No insight. No thoughts on where technology is heading. No review of how technology has come this far. He is just parroting what somebody else has written. The only logical explanation for him even having a web log is for the hope that you will be dumb enough to click one of his revenue-generating ads.
much Star Trek. At best you mean tactile feedback. Touch is something you might require, say.. sentience to appreciate and we aren't there quite yet.
Quack, quack.
The closest we have to a robot is the Honda robot - which still cannot handle many basic functions. AI has gradually increased, but nothing spectacular. Why has there not been more progress?
AdsJunction.com Ad Network
*ahem* Now that's science!
what the hell is a 'junk character', anyway?