Archive for Misc
May 31, 2007 at 9:13 am - Tags: France, Misc
In what appears to be a world first, Orange and French robot-builder Robosoft announced yesterday that they are working together to allow people visiting the Chateau de Versailles without leaving their own home.
Starting from June, subscribers to the Orange fiber service will be able to drive a mobile robot from their PC, and see what the robot sees. They will also get audio comments on a painting when the robot is in front of it. The robot will allow people to virtually visit rooms of the Chateau that are actually closed to the public (video here).
A really cool application of robotics, although I’m not sure it’s really “scalable”.
May 21, 2007 at 12:56 pm - Tags: Misc
Not much time to blog these days, but a few interesting things in the news:
. Carnegie Mellon announced the Robot Hall of Fame 2007 inductees. Strange selection, IMHO.
. Michael Bay, director of the long-awaited Transformers movie, released its first theatrical trailer. Wow. Very promising.
. The Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer (DEPTHX), a robotic autonomous submarine, is exploring the world’s deepest known sinkhole, in Mexico. You can follow the mission on this blog.
April 23, 2007 at 3:24 pm - Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Misc
Inkblot earth has released the results of an online poll asking people if they are afraid of future “Intelligent Machines”. More than 6,000 people have responded, giving these numbers:
16.7% Yes, I find the idea of intelligent machines frightening (1002 votes)
27.1% No, I don’t find intelligent machines frightening (1632 votes)
56.3% I’m not afraid of intelligent machines, I’m afraid of how humans will use the technology (3366 votes)
The poll did not use a representative panel though, as noted by the author:
“16% of voters fearing AI is quite high. I can only imagine that this percentage would rise sharply if the poll was subjected to people with less knowledge of tech and/or science.”
Indeed.
April 17, 2007 at 9:41 am - Tags: Misc
The guys at Engadget have been conducting a poll among their readers to select the “2006 Robot of the Year“. The initial selection was quite odd, but the results are much more bizarre: “Lego Mindstorms NXT” gets about half of the ballot (on a total of 7,000 votes), while “TMX Tickle Me Elmo”, a puppet that is to robots what Segway is to Formula 1 racing, is second. Manoi, a very cute humanoid robot, which clearly was my favorite, ends last. OK, Mindstorms are cool, but are they that cool?
April 8, 2007 at 8:07 pm - Tags: US, Misc
Discover Magazine has a strange post entitled “20 Things You Didn’t Know About… Robots“. Actually, it could have been “20 Things Everybody knows about robots”, as there is nothing really new here. Yet, their 19th “discovery” is probably the most interesting:
“Robotics expert Henrik Christensen predicts humans will be having sex with robots within four years.”
I do agree with that. Scary as it may sound, “sex bots” are going to be a huge market.
