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The Year In Robot News
itwbennett writes "Who loves robots? You may love them more or less after seeing what 2010 gave us, robot-wise. It's not the rise of the machines yet, but that teddy bear creeped us out."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
.... toasters have now been confirmed to intentionally burn toast. They claim the One True God (tm) told them too, and that this is only the beginning of.. something.. that's already happened...
Fraking toasters.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Dilbert cartoon
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
With the advent of robots in factories why is it that we as humans have to work at all. I understand that at one point in history we humans had to make due with our abilities and the combined strength of animals and steam....but now with synthetic materials, auto-processed food, 1080p HD entertainment in 7.5 Surround sound and cars that can travel farther than we can on foot, why....WHY...do we have to work at all? Shouldn't we use our combined intelligence to use robots to serve us food, mine our minerals, construct our houses, do all the menial tasks that consume too much of our time...time that could be used to further human progression. I have been told that people NEED to work...as if the human race would crumble into dust the next day. Hell...thanks to this magic box and letter panel I can transmit my thoughts thru "cyber space" with minimal amounts of effort. A task that would take a MASSIVE effort and man hours just 30 years ago. why can't civilized nations get off this collective failure of a system and step up to the most obvious path?
Isaac Asimov may not be writing any new stories of late
Yeah, he used to be so prolific, but then after 1992 his output diminished considerably. I guess dying can do that to a guy.
This was also the first year of the multi autonomous ground-robotic international challenge (MAGIC), in which teams of robots collaborated to perform urban recon/search-rescue type missions. This competition focused on autonomous exploration, map building, object recognition, and coordination between both the robots and the human operators. 23 teams from around the world entered the competition, with the top five finalists competing just a few weeks ago in Adelaide, Australia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi_Autonomous_Ground-robotic_International_Challenge
It was also covered on slashdot:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/11/19/004203
And Team Michigan, from the University of Michigan, took first place and $750k in prize money. (Forgive my obvious bias, I'm the team leader :)
http://april.eecs.umich.edu/magic/
Well that's because we need to extend copyright. WIthout 200 years after death, what's his motivation to right more stories?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Yes, to me that seems the robot that will have the most chance to become a success in the near future. If you make it a bit simpler and don't use a Segway for its locomotion it will be a lot cheaper. It would be very nice to have that thing go to a shop for me with a shopping list and bring the groceries back home. The fact that I am virtually present in the shop means that I can have a conversation with the shopkeeper about what products to buy. Of course it's cheaper to have someone else do the shopping for me but this is way cooler, and a robot is always ready and available, just like a car vs public transport.
-- Cheers!