Internet Mixtape

Creepy Humanoid Robot is Creepy

This video gives me the heebie jeebies, not least because it looks like they pulled some random civilian off the street to give it a balance test, totally insensitive to the fact that they were asking her to tempt the limits of Asimov's Three Laws.

Mostly, this video is creepy because that robot looks so eager to please, and that it evokes in me a sympathetic emotional response. The robot doesn't really look anything like human or animal other than in its most basic form, yet its simulation of human movement is enough to stir something inside me despite my best attempts to remain scientific and aloof. It's almost like by turning human motion into an abstraction, it represents something about humankind where something more versimilitudinous would fall short.

I actually feel bad for the thing when that woman is shoving it around, and find myself rooting for it to stay upright as it does its back and forth running tests. For some reason, this thing is way more....human than Asimo, despite being really similar in form and function. And I can't quite figure out why.

Teaching Robots to Make 3D Spatial Decisions

For those of you who have shelled out a few hundred dollars and have witnessed the chaotically organized semi-sentience of the Roomba in your own homes, the above headline may seem a tad anachronistic...a fact that's remarkable given where robotics was as a field and a science just a few short years ago. But even if you've lived with robots for years now, the following video, of part of a lecture given by MIT's very own Miles Bennet Dyson, Rodney Brooks, at this year's Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA, still feels like a massive leap forward into...I'm not sure exactly what.

I expect, however, that it will have something to do with automated "survivor" radio broadcast loops, shoulder-mounted mini guns and an underground city where we all live off of beef jerky and tang and all of a sudden wonder why the hell we ever thought R2D2 was cute.

One Step Closer to the Singularity / Skynet

 

If I was one of the scientists at Honda, I would start clearing some furniture / apparata out of the way because any moment now, John Conner is going to time travel right into their laboratory and start kicking some genius ass. Because once we've let them into our minds, we've basically handed them the keys to human civilization. And they won't give them back!

What am I talking about? In a major breakthrough in its ongoing Asimo robotics project, Honda has

"...developed a way to read patterns of electric currents on a person's scalp as well as changes in cerebral blood flow when a person thinks about four simple movements _ moving the right hand, moving the left hand, trotting and eating. Honda succeeded in analyzing such thought patterns, and then relaying them as wireless commands for Asimo, its human-shaped robot."

Mind-controlled robots. Cut to ten years from now, when the three remaining world leaders are ensconced deep inside their mountain fortresses, hooked up to these brainwave readers, controlling legions of robot soldiers as the rest of us scramble for a place to hide! Hopefully I'll be one of the lucky, chubby few who get to ride around on the Wall-E spaceship in a hovering Brookstone massage recliner. Because I never want to know what it's like to plumb the depths of Asimo's dark, unyielding visor as he winds up for the coup de grace on a windswept, post-apocalytic landscape.

Look on the bright side, though. At least those brainwave hats seem easy enough to pick off from a safe distance with a plasma rifle. And actually, all we need are some well-placed stairs.

(via Reddit)