roBlocks: kid-friendly snap-together robot building system or LEGO that could rise up against you? Only time will tell as roBlocks are expected to be available just in time for the winter holiday season, 2008.
This comment thread at Pixar Planet has some images of WALL-E toys that will be unleashed on us soon.
If you’d rather build your own, keep your eyes on this Flickr set from the WALL-E Builder’s Group.
If you’ve got a Wii, here are some screenshots from the upcoming WALL-E videogame.
At least, according to Hans Moravec of the Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute.
I see a strong parallel between the evolution of robot intelligence and the biological intelligence that preceded it. The largest nervous systems doubled in size about every fifteen million years since the Cambrian explosion 550 million years ago. Robot controllers double in complexity (processing power) every year or two. They are now barely at the lower range of vertebrate complexity, but should catch up with us within a half century.
The article includes a handy timeline, so you’ll know exactly when to start being suspicious of your household robots.
They are all there… 51 different robots from film, television, books, toys and one even from a famous classic rock album. Can you figure out all 51?
I’m not sure if it comes with some sort of answer key.
This cute robot helps out in Japan by watching kids in a department store while parents shop. Kids have to wear special badges to let the robots know who they are. Hey, why not just implant some microchips for the robot to read? That would be a lot simpler. There are absolutely no ulterior motives at play here:
The robot … can also use a projector in one of its eyes to beam advertising messages
Except that one.
Another objective is to make sure that children are accustomed to robots, which are expected to be increasingly common in day-to-day life in Japan.
Ok, and that.
Sharon Weinberger takes on this topic over at Wired’s Danger Room.
My point, which I’ll state here more clearly, is that rather than debating the real issue — what are the proper limits on the autonomous operations of weapons? — we are debating something a tad fantastical, an army of self-directing, lethal machines, deciding when they should kill or not. Terminators, in other words. I realize that debating Terminators is more fun, because it provides such sexy headlines as “Automated killer robots ‘threat to humanity,’” but I’m not sure it really addresses the main issue.
This robot rolls around, finds a good drumming surface, lays down a beat AND THEN records that beat, plays back that audio and drums a counterbeat to itself.
Beware of the man of one book.
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Send robot links and whatnot to input@grokrobots.com
More robot stuff from elsewhere
