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

Kissing Empty Air

Recently, the hubub over imaginary CGI robots has reached new heights. While real humanoid robots look pretty inhuman, the media more and more acts like a 3D game character is exactly the same as a 3D “physical meatspace” robot. Lately, the excitement in our gynoid era has shifted to false female-presenting lips smacking together under

What Real Robots Look Like

Despite all the biped fantasy circulating on the Internet these days, real “robots” – industrial robots which have evolved for 200 years from the first Jacard Looms, are gaining ground. In the 20th century, this kind of automation led to increased productivity per worker. In the 21st, it may be leading to worker devaluation: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-automation-exclusive/exclusive-amazon-rolls-out-machines-that-pack-orders-and-replace-jobs-idUSKCN1SJ0X1 

Irascible Robots (not ‘fighting back’)

Robots That Jump are designed to interact in the real world, ignoring the silly fantasy of creating ‘mind’ in a machine in order to interact. The removal of that phantasm leads to better operating devices. And there’s no better illustration of this than the recent Boston Dynamics video of a robot trying to go through

Too bad there wasn’t a beheading…

Even Forbes, which should know better, has its lame reporters reporting on the “mind” of Sophia, the first “robot citizen” of Saudi Arabia. https://www.forbes.com/sites/zarastone/2017/11/07/everything-you-need-to-know-about-sophia-the-worlds-first-robot-citizen/#29420af346fa This big electric puppet, with some small “ai” features useful in tricking children into thinking it is alive, is claimed to have mind and emotions. After characterizing the robot as a