Power for Robot Brains

Robots use a lot of power compared to a human. At first thought, this might be obvious – after all, can’t they fly and crash through walls? But the real story is that humanoid robots are delicate – more like a 95-year old stepping very carefully so they don’t fall and break their hip. Their

Signing a Virtual Artist

I must say – this one surprised even me: What does it mean to “sign” a band that doesn’t exist? While virtual bands have been put together ever since the Monkees of the Beatles’ 1960 era, to Gorillaz today. To be fair, Peter Tork could actually play music. And “real” bands have teams which create

CES Robotic Pandemic Glorification

Just a short note on CES 2021 robotics. As you might expect, people are writing post-mortems for a year with log innovation, but lots of adoption of virtual services. During 2020, many tech-pundits felt that the pandemic would finally bring humanoid robots into widespread use. Instead, we got Zoom. However there is a framework for

Robots Encourage Human Risk-Taking

There’s been a lot of excitement about robots and artificial intelligence in recent years. One is pretty irrational – humanoid robots becoming the equal of humans. One, more rational, is various service robots, as well as “artificial intelligences” taking over tasks like driving cars and airplanes. The 1950s and 1960s spawned two views of future

Covid-Forced Dreams of Robo-Tech

2020 is the year of the Covid-19 pandemic, caused by a coronavirus. First off, I’d like to point out the single best writer on the topic, Erin Bromage, if you actually want to understand what the virus is and how it spreads: April 19, 2020 – the likely history of how the virus spread. https://www.erinbromage.com/post/where-we-are-now

Robot Skin and Computational Overload

There’s a long history of announcements from the robotic community, claiming that “robot skin” has been created. Mostly, these have been unserious, since the huge computational load for managing skin sensation is not part of the story. A few historical examples: https://newatlas.com/smart-robot-skin/55853/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/hairy-artificial-skin-gives-robots-a-sense-of-touch/ Here’s and earlier one from 2010: https://cacm.acm.org/news/87060-robots-with-skin-enter-our-touchy-feely-world/fulltext Cool, but no ability to

An Actual Robot that Jumps

The “public” robotics (as opposed to the private world of practical industrial robots) is split into two factions. One promotes electric puppets who supposedly have humanlike “minds” and do art or otherwise replace humans. The second faction tries to build robotic bodies that can actually function in the real world. The public tends to confuse

Making Dating into a Message from the Future

In a new low for humanity, our most technically advanced news media – distributed, Internet-based stories allowing instant access and comments – decided to act like a 3-year old and “believe” in the Hanson Robotics “Sophia”, the reputed “first robot citizen” of Saudi Arabia. The video interview is visible on this page: https://finance.yahoo.com/video/sophia-robot-dating-apps-kids-180844755.html The event

Atlas Deepfake

Well, well, people are so desperate to have robots that they’re willing to propagate phony videos of the Boston Dynamics humanoid in action This worked great for Corridor Digital, a Los Angeles VFX house, who wanted to parody some of the real videos, including the one of Atlas where it is being “taunted”. A great

Another Puppet Show, Featuring a Gynoid Robot Being a “Creative Artist”

Well, the latest in the bright future of robots is here, and it is a “creative artist” Ai-Da“, a gynoid robot whose “works” have actually been sold to idiot buyers for a total > $1 million dollars. Quoting Devidiscourse (India’s media loves humanoid robots), “…Described as “the world’s first ultra-realistic AI humanoid robot artist”, Ai-Da