Japanese Sumo Robots

At first, I kept thinking that some of these robots brought a flag to a knife fight… but on reading over some of the comments, it appears that those flags were meant to mess with another robot’s “vision.”
At first, I kept thinking that some of these robots brought a flag to a knife fight… but on reading over some of the comments, it appears that those flags were meant to mess with another robot’s “vision.”
“All the entrants are people who neither have the technical expertise, determination, nor the focus it takes to build an actual robot. That is why the robots in this contest can barely even move forward, and why they put on stunningly crappy sumo matches.”
Thanks to Liz, I found out about this great TEDxBoston talk by Andrew McAffee on robots and jobs. It’s a nice companion piece to the recent news/announcement about the automated Amazon Go grocery store.
“You can express your choice by clicking on one of the two choices in front of you. In each of the two possible outcomes, the affected characters will be visually marked with the symbol of a skull, a medical cross, or a question mark to signal what will happen to this character, corresponding to death, injury, or an uncertain outcome, respectively.”
Spotted this guy on my walk to work, near the corner of Washington and Wabash. I don’t run across that much street art on my walks anymore, but this guy kind of caught my eye as I was waiting for the light.
“Your robot, the one you paid good money for, has chosen to kill you. Better that, its collision-response algorithms decided, than a high-speed, head-on collision with a smaller, non-robotic compact. There were two people in that car, to your one. The math couldn’t be simpler.”
Set 6,000 years in the future, Robbie is an aging self-aware robot looking back on his life in the last moments before his battery life runs out.
Created by Neil Harvey, the film is composed entirely from over 10 hours of NASA archival footage. I’m not 100% on this, as I assumed there were some scenes that involved manipulation, but I think it’s almost all done through video from NASA.
Part of me is in awe at what we can achieve, through math and technology. Another part of me is just waiting for the day when an evil scientist puts some time towards these guys, and pulls off the first robotic bank heist or robotic assassination. And there’s yet another part of me that thinks all of this is fun and games, until the Singularity arrives.
Allison happened to spot a gem of a thing that happened yesterday: a photo that Ben had taken of me (dressed like a robot), was used on Gawker!
I recently got back into listening to i am robot and proud. In particular, I’ve been looping the first song I heard of his, entitled A Proposal to Tune the World to F. I learned about the artist way back n 2006, back when one used to do things like order CD’s. I’m happy to see so much of his…
When an engineer at Anybots got hungry, he did what any other person would do: he sent his robotic avatar a mile down the street to pick up a scone. While this is obviously a PR stunt, it’s a delightful one to me. Here’s some video of the whole event (picks up at the 2:00 mark): Also? I cannot wait…