Do you find your current robot to be hard, cold, and emotionless? For your next computerized companion, you may want to consider a pneumatic, inflatable model. Soft to the touch, easy to empathize with :) But don’t scoff, this is some real rough-and-tumble technology:
According to my conversations with Saul, the arm alone (sans valves and air supply) weighs a mere 2 lbs and is still able to lift several hundred pounds (eg. a person) with just 50-60 psi. He tells me that it can handily defeat a human at arm wrestling
It’s easy to see a bright future in the pneumatics and inflatables industry, have you invested recently?
(Source: hizook.com)
PETMAN. The anthro-bot that will be the future soldier, or policeman. Headless and as strong as an ox, but it’s motions are jarringly human. Watch it do jumping jacks and push-ups here. Brought to you by Boston Dynamics, makers of BigDog.
$2,200 a month for a super-charging robotic exoskeleton, not bad!
Professor Yoshiyuki Sankai (dark suit), of the Cybernics Lab, University of Tsukuba, with a colleague wearing a prototype of the ‘Cyberdyne HAL Robot suit’. Wearing the suit enables the participant to lift extra weights without effort.
http://www.computerweekly.com/galleries/237252-1/Cyberdyne-HAL-robotic-exoskeleton-to-help-paralyzed.htm
No longer do you need friends to start your own dance crew.
Honda’s Asimo learns dance moves from real live humans, using data gathered from the Kinect sensor.
1. You watch movie trailer, wearing mind probes
2. Mind probes consult youtube videos, reconstructing your inner visual experience
3. REAL LIFE MIND READING
In the future, robots will definitely have thought processes indistinguishable from our own.
Figure 1: The Robot, Grace, following a person down the hallway.
Figure 2: The LCD screen with graphical face used on the robot, shown here with a speech bubble that echos what the robot says (“Keep going!”).
Work on a socially acceptable follow-bot by researchers at CMU, can rub off a bit more like a psychopathic stalker-bot.
Note: The Robot has a name, while the human does not. Robots may one day be our true companions.
Learning by imitation - how to flip a pancake
