robots
edyong | April 2, 2009In a laboratory at Aberystwyth University, Wales, a scientist called Adam is doing some experiments. He is trying to find the genes responsible for producing some important enzymes in yeast, and he is going about it in a very familiar way. Based on existing knowledge, Adam is coming up with new hypotheses and designing experiments to test them. He carries them out, records and evaluates the results, and comes up with new questions. All of this is part and parcel of a typical scientist's life but there is one important difference that sets Adam apart - he's a robot.
Adam is the brainchild of…
razib | March 17, 2009This bloggingheads.tv about war robots is pretty fascinating. One of the issues with robots is that people are fixated on androids and really human-like artifice, and that hasn't really panned out. But it seems that technology is becoming a seamless part of our lives in a way that we're not even particularly aware of. The new shuffle isn't just a technology story, it's a lifestyle & fashion story. I'm very interested near the end when Peter Singer recounts how someone with a chip implant began to consider un-augmented humans "cows." I'm moderately skeptical of extrapolating from this…
amillikan | March 14, 2009
When will humans turn over the job of war to robot slaves? According to Peter W Singer, author of the new book Wired for War, it's happening already. In this week's Science Saturday, Peter and John Horgan discuss the role of robots in the success of the Iraq surge and whether America is starting to look like a bit like Skynet to the people of the Middle East. They also discuss reasons to fear the coming of cyborgs and whether robots might not someday bring about the end of war.
edyong | October 20, 2008
Moving robots are becoming more and more advanced, from Honda's astronaut-like Asimo to the dancing Robo Sapien, a perennial favourite of Christmas stockings. But these advances are still fairly superficial. Most robots still move using pre-defined programmes and making a single robot switch between very different movements, such as walking or swimming, is very difficult. Each movement type would require significant programming effort.
Robotics engineers are now looking to nature for inspiration. Animals, of course, are capable of a multitude of different styles of movement. They have…
edyong | September 30, 2008
I am walking strangely. About a week ago, I pulled something to my left ankle, which now hurts during the part of each step just before the foot leaves the ground. As a result, my other muscles are compensating for this to minimise the pain and my gait has shifted to something subtly different from the norm. In similar ways, all animal brains can compensate for injuries by computing new ways of moving that are often very different. This isn't a conscious process and as such, we often take it for granted.
But we can get a sense of how hard it actually is by trying to program a robot to…
edyong | August 3, 2008With their latest film WALL-E, Pixar Studios have struck cinematic gold again, with a protagonist who may be the cutest thing to have ever been committed to celluloid. Despite being a blocky chunk of computer-generated metal, it's amazing how real, emotive and characterful WALL-E can be. In fact, the film's second act introduces a entire swarm of intelligent, subservient robots, brimming with personality.
Whether or not you buy into Pixar's particular vision of humanity's future, there's no denying that both robotics and artificial intelligence are becoming ever more advanced. Ever since…
zooillogix | March 10, 2008"Hunting Trophies" is an art project designed as a sort-of protest against hunting while also raising "questionings on the relation between Human and Animal and Human and Non-Human." The aptly named French artist, France Cadet, states that she is also trying to "grant them back for a moment the right to life, to free expression and to judgment."
Well whatever she's doing, we want one for the mantle. Cyberdoll via We-Make-Money-Not-Art
French Cadet clearly never saw the hunting lodge scene from Evil Dead 2...
More below the fold...
From Cyberdoll: The robots are able to eye the nearby…