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

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