The British TV show Big Brother was recently invaded by Titan the Robot, the 7-foot 3-inch tall, human-operated “robot” from Cyberstein Robots.
Apparently the flatmates found him hiding in the shower a few days ago before he started barking orders at them. Question is, which house-skank will get caught doing the nasty with this bot? You know it’s gonna happen. Video below.
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The war between man and machine just took a new turn. The T-800 series has chosen sides in the Apple/Windows war. Check out the Leon Wang story above. Looks like Terminators are gunning for Steve Jobs now.
Nike chase from ilovedust on Vimeo.
If only US commercials were this cool. If they were, we might actually be swayed by them and buy more products. This one was commissioned by Nike Japan. Enjoy.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that Grant Imahara has been working on a robot sidekick for late-night talk show host Craig Ferguson. Well, CBS has apparently allowed the robot sidekick and Grant Imahara had to teach him the Robot Skeleton Sidekick Laws in the video below.
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It is spring time, a time of romance and a time of productivity. South Korea has yet again been productive through their robot inventions. ED Corporation stands out this day with their civil services robot by the name of CIROMI, the robot located in movie theaters. CIROMI’s name is a mix of the words CInema, RObot, and somehow dreams. The creators at Ed Corporation said that they put dreams in the name because CIROMI helps make people’s dreams come true at the cinema. Management at the newly developed movie theater had a keen interest in robotics so they signed a deal to have the robot premiere along side the movie theater.
When CIROMI detects someone (via laser range finder), it rolls over to the person and greets him or her with a friendly greeting. Then, the customer can choose to do a select amount of things. Right now, you can only use the touch screen software to play games, send simple e-mails, or take photos with the built in camera. Specifically, this work in progress is only good for entertainment when waiting in a long line. So when you and your sweetheart are going to a movie, you shouldn’t be afraid of a long line anymore. In the future though, it will be able to make simple conversation, recommend specific movies based on personal interests of the person, and then buy the ticket right there. The simple version of CIROMI is also being used in train stations and restaurants. This way, the simple CIROMI can branch off into many different occupations.
Where do the Caprica writers get their ideas for how cylons work? None exist, so surely they aren’t plausible. Right? Wrong. They have a real roboticist consulting on the show. Northwestern University robotics engineer Malcolm McIver was a consultant on the upcoming movie Tron, and worked with writers on Battlestar Galactica and Caprica to make the cylons plausible. Not possible just yet, but plausible.
One of the themes of my research is understanding the ways in which intelligence is not just all about what’s above your shoulders. Nervous systems evolved with the bodies they control-the interaction is extremely sophisticated, and stubbornly resists our attempts to understand it through basic science research or emulation in robotics . . . One of the things we’ve learned about the cleverness that resides outside the cranium is that things like the spinal cord are incredibly sophisticated “brains” operating sometimes without much input from upstairs. Through some old experiments that are better not gone into, scientists showed that animals can walk with little brain beyond the parts that regulate circulation and breathing and their spinal cord. This is because the spinal cord can do most of what we need for basic locomotion without any input. The point is that control of the body is distributed-it doesn’t just live in the brain. The lesson hasn’t been lost on robotics folks; for example, Rodney Brooks popularized an approach called “subsumption architecture” based on this idea. So – back to Caprica: For episode 2, “Rebirth,” the show needed some explanation for why the metacognitive processor was only working in one robot. The real reason, as we know, is that only one had Zoe in it; but the roboticists were being pressed by Daniel Graystone as to why it wasn’t working in others. The idea that I gave them, which they used, was that it was because this particular metacognitive processor had distributed its control to peripheral subunits. Because of this, it had become tied to one particular robot. It’s an idea straight out of contemporary neuroscience and efforts to emulate this in robotics.
The new Terminator 2 Judgment Day T-800 1:1 Scale Endoskull Replica will scare the crap out of your friends in the dark. Assuming you invite your friends over into the dark anyway. This realistic looking skull has light up eyes and even plays the Terminator theme.
It’s the T-800 and it retails for $599.99. You can pre-order at Entertainment Earth.
I like the Cybermen that the new show has given us so far. They aren’t quite as cool as the old cybermen, but they work. But judging by some of the show’s concept art, we could have gotten something much darker like the image above.
There’s also an image of a red Dalek with what looks like one multi-purpose arm. Hopefully they get to play with these designs in an actual episode some day.
If our big corporations like Intel had some sense, we probably could of already made robot soldiers. Only if big corps thought of not trying to brainwash us. Instead of spending millions on advertisements, how about spending millions on building actual robots. In the Superbowl Ad below, Intel describes their new core processor as “the most amazing technological achievement in the history of the company.” But then comes along their computer generated robot, which looks similar to the homemade robot (Loki), and the poor robot over hears their conversation. Watch the rest of the video below.
Unlike the Americans, the Japanese actually spend their money wisely. They build robots that we truly dream of. Though some Japanese companies spend money on advertisements as well, they are more conservative about it. Every company needs a way to get their information out to the public. Otherwise, Intel and other big corps could crash and bailouts would yet again be issued, lowering the value of the U.S. Dollar, once again.
The Tough Guy Challenge is an annual competition in England where participants struggle against mud, ice, and fire. And who’s tougher than Robocop? He’s part man, part machine. Sadly he didn’t win though. At least he didn’t have to go up against Ed-209.
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 Robots are a fact of life. Soon they will kill us. We’d like to document the coming apocalypse. |
