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The Best Robots of 2009
kkleiner writes "Singularity Hub has just unveiled its second annual roundup of the best robots of the year. In 2009 robots continued their advance towards world domination with several impressive breakouts in areas such as walking, automation, and agility, while still lacking in adaptability and reasoning ability. It will be several years until robots can gain the artificial intelligence that will truly make them remarkable, but in the meantime they are still pretty awesome."
Can you fuck it?
In the movie Evolution with David Duchovny and Orlando Jones, the Earth was "seeded" by alien life forms. What happened next was an evolutionary explosion with the alien life mutating at a rate far beyond the rate of normal Earth life. Things like primates and birds and even dinosaur-ish creatures developed and proliferated.
However, in the race for evolutionary supremacy, it wasn't these super-advanced life forms that finally won out. Rather it was the amorphous blob which did little except consume and grow.
Even here in the "real world", humans may be considered the apex of evolutionary development, but consider how outnumbered we are by bacteria, insects, and other small, hardy life forms that swarm everywhere.
Now extrapolate that observation to robots. Yes, there are impressive implementations of technology and these things seem really great at what they do. But human-like robots are only one genus. There are others that are much more successful in the wild, like botnets. These intelligent agents swarm together, proliferate on their own, have complex behaviors, and number in the hundreds of thousands.
Evolutionarily-speaking, botnets are the most successful robots of any year.
Support this: http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/ So we don't have to fight the closed systems like we did with the PC. Really, robotics is going through its early DIY stage, where most interesting stuff is built by hand using lots of modified parts. Anything we can do, as it moves into mainstream products, to keep the DIY rights to open the hardware and change the software if we want, helps our future freedom.
You will be assimilated into the collective, Resistance is futile, please provide your IP for the a efficient injection of nanoprobes to inter the collective consciousness, we are borg your are borg, join us.
I love each and every robot most of all!
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
CYPERNETIC ORGANISMS.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
see why factory workers should be terrified for their job security.
Actually, it's marvellous material to be showed to reluctant teens. Seeing that manual labour will most probably disappear in the next decades could help some of them...And you know what they say...if only one is saved ,the whole process would be worth it(Of course they will not take into account the others that will just loose faith in humanity).
I don't have an intelligent phone, so I need to be.
I hope in 2010 someone makes a Drossel von Flügel robot.
OK, how many of us immediately scrolled down to the female manga style hottie robot?
The Adept Quatro was very impressive. I'd love to see the vision system that it was using and will have to show that vid to my employer to see if I can get them to buy one.
If there is a breakthrough in portable power generation, then we will see an explosion in mobile robotics development.
Whatever happened to the Cool Robot of the Week site? It hasn't been updated in years.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Most of those were pretty cool, the Asimo one was ridiculously simple though (relatively, at least). The hard part is getting a mechanical device that can execute such precise movements as software orders, not throwing a simple pathfinding algorithm on a laptop and cheating with an overhead camera to issue the orders.
Rather than call them robots, the devices in the article are more correctly labeled dumb machines.
"Unionized, government street sweepers won't stand for mechanical sweepers that take their jobs."
Belive me the guy driving a street sweeper would defenitely prefer to be designing them.
The industrial revolution's success is based on the premise that automation allows society to progress. OTOH, it's basic failure is the current tradgedy of the commons. At fifty I have lost several jobs due to technology/social changes but I've made a good living from changing things with technology, and however small it may be I am changing society with this post.
The last time I was on a factory floor was the 80's, which in itself was quite a step up the food chain from a twenty-something "trailer park" day labourer with a wife and a kid. I recall reading at the time that the UK "metal workers(?)" union after months of fruitless negotiating had put a work ban on qualified fitters and turners performing any task that took less than X minutes to cycle (such as the metal press I was working in Australia). Their rationale was that any task that was that repetitive could be performed using a "one of a kind machine" by the same fitters and turners. This kind of thinking used to be called progressive, regardless of who it comes from.
Unions, Government and Big business (UGB) are all nessacary evils unless you can find somewhere to chase furry things with a stick and not be noticed, although don't expect to live much past your next severe tooth/throat/lung infection. When two or more of the "tribes" in UGB start swinging at each other the little guy is invariably trodden on in all the commotion. Yet like the abusive "parents" that they are, they will all tell you they love you dearly, it's the other parent who want's to, as Bill Cosby would once put it; "shoot you in the face with a bazzoka".
"This is where the problems begin. Like a fragile naked human pyramid, we are simultaneously supporting and resenting each other. We bitch out loud about our soul-sucking job as an anonymous face on an assembly line, while at the exact same time riding in a car that only an assembly line could have produced. It's a constant contradiction that has left us pissed off and joining informal wrestling clubs in basements." - David Wong, "The Monkeyshere".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Looks like I'll be working alone for quite a while yet.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Whatever happened to the Cool Robot of the Week site?
For that matter, why is the Singularity Hub engaging in an annual roundup of the best robots of the year? Wouldn't they argue such a roundup would only be useful on an exponentially accelerating schedule or something? You'd think they'd practice what they preach...
"It will be several years until robots can gain the artificial intelligence that will truly make them remarkable,"
No, really? Where have we heard this before? I don't think that anyone was under delusions that robots were really going to become self-aware this year.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
I'm wondering how much it costs, initial costs, and maintenance (including support+repair contracts).
Basically: is it cheaper than a factory worker in a 3rd world country?
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=185
In some cases where it is cheaper, they do use a mix of robotics and humans in China:
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=186
BTW some of the factory food there looks quite decent to me:
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=190
Fish, vegetables, egg and I do eat stuff like pig intestines and kidneys (and like it if it's done nicely), so that sort of stuff isn't a problem for me - doesn't need to be disguised in a sausage/patty/nugget. Yum ;).
The best robot is the one I've built, but no one has yet covered that he's a robot...mwahahahahaaa!
The cockroach robot “dash” is so much better suited for military deployment than the “mini tractor” trat irobot made. And it being made cheaply out of cardboard (and folded flat) means you can afford to release 1000’s of them, and, basically don’t need any human troops on the ground.
http://singularityhub.com/2009/12/22/a-review-of-the-best-robots-of-2009/comment-page-1/#comment-11906