I saw Eraserhead. The baby totally creeped me out. But the bit where they make erasers out of the guy's head was weird. I do not recommend this movie to anyone. On the other hand, it was considered a cult classic, and there were a lot of people who liked it. Asimov, like all "futurists" got it nice person-backwards. His first law of robotics was that a robot may not harm a human. But the first real "robots" were "smart" bombs and self-guided missiles. In other words, their only purpose was to kill people.
I also do not recommend anyone see that movie. I remember the droning background noise throughout virtually the whole film that made it an unpleasant experience. If you think that a movie should be entertaining and/or thought provokiing, then I don't recommend it. If you think that a movie should be like a bad acid trip, then by all means rent a copy of Eraserhead.
If they introduce a love robot that takes care of cooking, cleaning, and .... um ... the most important "duty," I predict the human race will die out in a couple of generations
I assumed that the love robot would be cordless. If she is Li-Ion powered, the hot tub is contraindicated.
No, sorry. There have been more sophistacated robots than those for years. The first real robot was the Unimate. It built cars. The Robot Hall of Fame : Unimate
Hmm. Cars do a pretty good job of killing people, don't they? Like if that many people died in plane crashes every day, how many of us would board an airplane as blithely as we get into our cars? And in defence of science fiction, I'd say the visions are of possible futures, not necessarily THE future. It's us that keeps getting it wrong.
I did some robot work in the early days of industrial robotics. The stories about me smashing stuff were legendary, and grew more so each time my coworkers retold the stories. Some of it had a grain of truth. I did manage to throw around a lot of small glass vials in a pharmaceutical plant. Tom
Engelburger was a genius. There was a nice interview about him on the educational science series White Heat, shown first on Public Broadcast in 1994, http://www.amazon.com/White-Heat-Technology-Carroll-Pursell/dp/0520089057 Since it was informative and educational, that means nobody watched it. I believe the show that featured classic Engelburger interviews was called "The beat goes on"
No need to defend Science Fiction "Unimate was conceived in 1956 at a meeting between inventors George Devol and Joseph Engelberger, where they discussed the writings of science fiction. Together they made a serious commitment to develop a real, working robot"
And that's the problem, right there. What mass media should be all about is making us smarter. The promise and potential were huge. But nooo, we'd rather forget our own lives by involving ourselves in the manufactured emotions of imaginary characters on the 1984ish viewscreen. Sigh. Pass me another drink, Jayman.
It does. I don't even know where the latest 'Survivor' is occuring because I spend my time on PBS, the NatGeo Channel and Animal Planet. Did you know that the largest cat wiskers ever recorded were on a Main Coon cat?
Oh My Bunny. We've actually cycled this thread around to the question "Do Robots dream of electric sheep".
I thought she was powered by a two-stroke, one-cylinder gas engine. All you really have to do is keep the air intake above water.
A gas powered robot is so old school. I was watching Top Servo and they think hydrogen powered robots are the future.
I think the reason the Big Dog looks a bit disturbing is because it neither looks like a dog nor a horse, but rather like two humans hunched over, carrying a heavy load on their backs, their heads somewhere underneath the load, doing this odd dance. The leg lengths certainly indicate this. I did think the little run/jump they had it do was very promising. I agree with the other poster... if it can do this much out of the gate, imagine in a few years when they get the gaits ironed out and maybe 'teach' it to actually run.
