When it comes to making great art the odds are good that you
think about the makers of great art you think of a painter, bent over a canvass
agonizing over where to put each stroke, but art can be made by a robot.
The machine in question, known simply as the e-David, is
designed to do one thing: find great art and copy it.
When it comes to robots we don’t expect them to see the way that
we do. But we do expect it to have some way to view the world around it. Maybe
we expect that to be in the form of cameras, or perhaps with an infrared map.
What we do not expect is for a robot to be completely blind to the world around
it, but much like its living counterparts a blind robot can in fact figure out
how to get around.
Robots are, for the most part, the prevue of adults. We
design them, we build them and we get to play with them, but a growing number
of companies are bringing robots to the younger set and some of the companies
that started out with adults are looking to kids as a new market for their
products.
When you think about
what makes a robot work the odds are good that what you picture is chipsets and
wires. What you probably do not picture is a big slimy hunk of mold, but that
is exactly what is happening in the world of robots.
When it comes to robots sensors make the world real. It
allows a machine to help to make sense of the world around them. It tells them
when they have made contact with a wall, or when they are in the presence of a
desired chemical. One cross continent team is working on a very small sensor.
Surgery always comes with risks, and so does technology. So when
you add a new advanced technology to a surgical procedure there is
always a risk. Patients and doctors however need to be aware of those
risks in order to make good decisions about which courses of treatment
are best for the situation at hand. Failing to make exactly that kind of
a notification has a woman in the state of New Jersey suing Intuitive
Surgical, the makers of the da Vinci surgical robot system.
Olympic
swimmers have to train for years to get into the kind of peak physical
condition that allows them to push the limits of the human body can do. When it comes to robots with amazing
physical capabilities it is the developers who work hard to create the almost
super human like capabilities of the machine.
Robots
can do a lot of cool things. They can explore the depths of a volcano, or the
far reaches of the solar system. But what about the less important tasks in
life? Mug
Marker spends his days, not too surprisingly, decorating mugs for use in the hot
drink dreams of its makers.
When
it comes to getting your custom blend coffee drink, who do you picture getting
it from? The odds are good that you probably picture a happy looking barista
handing you a warm cup of your favorite drink with a paper capped straw peeking
out of the top. One company
in Austin, Texas, Briggo Coffee, has put a coffee robot on a University of
Texas campus.
In a recent test done by the Ames
Research Center, a part of NASA, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano controlled a
robot on California soil from the heights of the International Space Station. The
robot he is controlling is a K-10 rover, which had made appearances in space
before.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
