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The Year In Robotics
malachiorion writes "From Google's emergence as a robotics giant to Gypsy Danger's emergence as a giant robot (we can root for), here's my attempt to round up the biggest trends in robotics in 2013. These trends are by no means comprehensive or ranked, but feel free to add your own picks for the year's biggest bot-related breakthroughs and setbacks."
$25 and easily the next gift for that hard-to-buy-for brother-in-law.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Robots made a comeback - on the moon, after a 37-year hiatus.
Apart from that, the article misses a bunch of very important trends and events in robotics. For example, industrial cooperative robots ( like Rethink Robotics Baster ) etc taking off.
A much better, video laden article here
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/video-friday-our-favorite-robot-videos-and-biggest-stories-from-2013
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
Whatever happened to NASA's Cool Robot of the Week website?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
More significant events:
Was Google pushing LInux that year? They flog it now as Android and last I heard Android had over 50% of the mobile market. You may also be interested to hear that Andy Rubin who headed up Android is now heading up Google's robotics division.
Google has some serious technical and financial assets they can bring to bear and for you to just dismiss that out of hand reflects poorly on your intellect.
Language is an amazing thing, especially Australian English; there is hardly a word in the dictionary that isn't somehow a profanity in Australia (http://www.koalanet.com.au/australian-slang.html):
Root (verb and noun) : synonym for f*ck in nearly all its senses: "I feel rooted"; "this washing machine is rooted"; "(s)he's a good root". A very useful word in fairly polite company.
Root rat : somebody who is constantly looking for sex.
Wombat : somebody who eats, roots and leaves (see also root)
What about the porn industry? Don't they kind of lead the herd in coming up with clever uses for such technology?
Google just bought up one of the biggest players in the market with the biggest budget (namely the military).
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Unless it were cheaper to outsource it to somewhere with less environmental controls, working controls for the remaining humans... somewhere like.. shit, I can't even think of a place like that. Must not exist.
Only half a century? Those big honking pyramid-looking things in Egypt didn't build themselves. ;)
Yeah right. There is a high cost of designing an assembly line for robots.
If companies wanted automated assembly lines, they'd build their own robotic factory, and cut Foxconn out.
Do you notice the contradiction there? Why would companies risk their own money and time building robotic factories if Foxconn already has the know-how and has already made the investment? Why do companies outsource companies to other clean their offices, then? They could hire the cleaning ladies by themselves!
Gypsy Danger is a giant mecha (Jagger to be precise) and not a robot. :P
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
It's Jaeger! Not Jagger!
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
Sorry to burst everyones bubble, but the true future of robots has been anticipated since the late 70s, by a man named Mark Pauline.
He knows the nature of the robot and nurtures it for a dismal future.
In a bitter message of hopeless grief, I present to you Survival Research Laboratories. www.srl.org
The REAL future of robotics...
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Unless 3D printers, CNC machines and laser cutters don't count, I would say 2013 was filled with robots.
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Good point, though a lot of bots, like most of the models in the DRC, also use LIDAR to get a full 360-degree awareness. But check out NASA JPL's RoboSimian. They didn't do this for the first DRC trial, but for the finals next year, they're going to mount cameras around the entire body (it has the mounts already, but the ones in back are empty), so it can reverse direction, go sideways, etc., without having to deal with a neck, or wobbling around to get into a face-forward position.
If I pay my factory workers 1/100th as much as an engineer costs and it takes a single hour to retrain them on a new project, I can still spending 1,000 engineering hours programming, testing, and debugging a SW update for the robot and come out significantly a head.
http://pacificrim.wikia.com/wiki/Gipsy_Danger