Honda's Asimo will be shown following 'Living With Robots' at Sundance
As a part of their “The Power of Dreams – Dream the Impossible” series of short films, Honda will be showing the newest contribution to the documentary series entitled “Living With Robots”. The film will introduce (or enforce) the idea of robots as a part of every day life. It will raise questions such as how someone respond to a new robot worker at a store they frequent or how easily robots will be able to integrate into a household. The film will include interviews from a variety of robot authors, scientists, enthusiasts, academics and more . A live demonstration of Honda’s Asimo humanoid robot will follow the film.
While I commend Honda for making documentaries that are forward thinking and encourage critical thinking towards technology, my idea of a future with robots is probably much more oppressive then the film will convey. A robot may fetch your coffee at Starbucks one day, but the next day it could be smashing you over the head with an espresso machine. I’m sure the Asimo demonstration will be awe inspiring as well, but I prefer not be to face to face with something that will eventually be hunting me down. At the very least, “Living With Robots” will raise awareness about the current state of robotics and allow those in attendance to know the face of the enemy.
You can view the other short films Honda has produced here.
CES 2010 has come and gone, and if your are an avid technology news reader you are probably overloaded with all kinds of great information to impress everybody with. While 3D dominated coverage and was the unofficial focus of the show this year, there were still a few robotics companies showing off their latest and greatest. No demos seemed to give out an immediate sense of doom – maybe just a hint of creepiness.
The main idea that many of the demonstrations showed was just how far robotics has come and how fast it is moving. In the past, updates on the Honda ASIMO or Sony AIBO would occasionally surface but were few and far between. CES 2010 had a plethora of new and updated robotics demos, so check them out after the break.
Below is a video of a robot demonstration to what looks like an elementary school class. When I was in elementary school we never got cool robot shows, just Number Munchers.
In the video, a robot navigates an obstacle course until it comes upon a wooden statue of a human. The robot then proceeds to give it a big robo-hug and carries it a short distance. I can’t imagine a robo-hug would be very comfortable, and personally I would be terrified as to where it was taking me.
Hate washing dishes? This could soon be a thing of the past.
Do you hate washing dishes? Of course you do, unless you are some kind of cleaning masochist. Hopefully your kitchen has never looked as bad as the picture on the left, and even if you own a dishwasher, the daily chore of loading and unloading dishes can be very annoying. Luckily the folks at Panasonic are developing a robot that is able to do the dishes for us. The robot consists of an arm that is able to grab and move dishware without breaking anything, plus a camera to observe the arm and make sure it doesn’t become confused. Before putting the dish into a dishwasher, the arm will first empty any remaining contents into a sink. The robotic arm is also capable of simple serving techniques, such as scooping food out of a serving dish and placing it in a bowl.
As with any robot, there is a dark side to go along with all of the potential benefits. In the case of Panasonic’s robotics division, they are reluctant to make a strong push into consumer robotics due to the fact that there are no safety standards or liability laws concerning robots that interact with humans. Panasonic is projecting sales of $1.1 billion of home use robots by 2015, so it is surprising that they are hesitant when such a large amount of sales and money could be on the horizon. The video below states this same fact, and also gives a short explanation of the robot, as well as a few other robots that Panasonic is developing for consumer and commercial use.
Most everyone has some sort of knowledge about Skynet, the computer program that eventually led to the war between humans & machines in the Terminator movies and TV shows. The concept of a self aware and artificially intelligent computer network is quite terrifying, but it may soon become a staple in networks across the world. There are a couple projects being researched and developed that all hold a piece of the Skynet puzzle, not to mention an actual system named Skynet that is currently in operation. So while Skynet in the Terminator universe was merely fiction, reality is just as alarming. Of course these new systems are meant to help society operate better, faster and stronger, but the worst actions often have the best intentions. Part 1 of 2 is below.
I’m posting this from my mobile phone so this will be short but sweet. Robotics company Boston Dynamics won funding from DARPA to build a “hopper” robot that is able to leap over obstacles in order to perform surveillance. A demonstration video can be seen here.
Robots are slowly beginning to pick up more and more skills to make them human-like or better. Toyota has built and demonstrated a robot that is able to run. Although the speeds are not very fast, this is just a small step towards giving robots too many abilities.
This video shows an incredibly fast robotic hand with an advanced vision system. It is able to do some amazing things at speeds that are mind boggling.
An impressive video. The speed that the hand operates at is amazing, and it’s vision seems just as fast but also accurate. It is a very good demonstration of the extreme speeds that robots are able to operate at.
But they real issue at hand is how terrifying it is that something can move that quickly. All I can think about are machine guns on each finger. With finger guns that move that quickly, what chance would a group a humans stand against it?
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