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Robots Take To the Stairs
Singularity Hub writes "Robots can climb stairs, and they are doing it everywhere you look. 'No big deal' you say, but it really is a big deal. Five to ten years ago, almost nobody was doing it. Now grad students are doing it all by themselves for thesis projects. Check out our review of robots navigating stairs, which includes some awesome videos."
What about Daleks?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
That would be the pusher robot. He is malfunctioning. Trust the shover robot; he will protect you from the terrible secret of space. Do you have stairs in your house?
I dunno. I'd rather have the robot go get my slippers and I go Venus, Mars, and Europa myself.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
"A Rough Road Leads to the Stairs".
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
You have 30 seconds to comply.
"Now grad students are doing it all by themselves for thesis projects."
As a grad student, I found the wording of the summary amusing. I can confirm that yes, we can climb stairs if need be. The elevators in my CS building go out about once every two weeks for instance. (Wasn't that long ago that the motor in one of the shafts caught fire and shut down that shaft for over a week. During which the other shaft broke down too for a short time.)
Of course, the real advance will be when robots follow in our paths and learn to take the elevator when one is available.
But if robots can climb stairs, are those of us with stairs in our house still protected?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
More chores for Roomba. More hammock time for me.
Yandelvayasna grldenwi stravenka
That's because 5-10 years ago, there wasn't a contemporary Dr. Who on TV. Robot designers had no clue with our limited human intelligence on how to get robots up the stairs. Upon the reemergence of the new Dr. Who, that one command "ELEVATE" and the new race of Daleks taught us humans to imagine robots going up stairs.
"Remembrance of the Daleks" first depicted a Dalek going up stairs, and without a verbal command to do so. October 1988.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
But then it'd take forever for the robot to get the slippers to you!
The enemies of Democracy are
I thought this article was a bit strange. Of the four or five videos posted, only one was a self contained two legged walker (the well known asimo). The others involved various specialized wheel systems. Even asimo relies on static stability. In fact robots (even legged ones) have been climbing stairs for at least 15 years. I remember in the early 90s the society of automobile engineers sponsored a contest for _undergraduate_ engineering students to develop legged robots that could traverse various obstacles -- One of them being a set of stairs. Every year several of the entries were able to pass that test. The more interesting recent developments are with dynamically stable and self contained robots that can climb stairs and traverse other obstacles. This really is a new development in the last 10 years. The most crazy cool example of this I've seen recently is the big dog.