Hasta La Gadget!

Is the great battle of man versus machine, here’s an outcome perhaps no one could have predicted–a tie. And kind of a dull one of that. Sure, there was a rousing come from behind push for scrappy humankind, leaving IBM’s Watson and all-time Jeopardy money maker, Brad Rutter, tied for $5,000 (with the show’s most winningest contestant, Ken Jennings, with a distant, but not insurmountable $2,000), but in all, the consensus seems to be that contest was, well, a bit lacking.

Jeopardy’s promoters have been promoting the three-way battle for $1 million as one for the ages since last year. What we got was the TV show equivalent of going over to a friends house to hang out, and having to watch them play video games for two hours–well, that and a lot of footage of Watson’s creators congratulating themselves on what was, admittedly, a pretty cool machine.

There were, however, some entertaining moments, as in, early on when Watson repeated an incorrect answer, prompting host Alex Trebek to fire back, “No Ken said that.”

If you did enjoy the spectacle, good news, there are two more shows–today’s double and final Jeopardy conclusion of yesterday’s event and a full game on Wednesday.

Super Bowl pre-game shows may not be known for catering to the gadget geeks out there, but this year, Fox has a surprise for you. Their pre-game coverage of the big game will feature a humanoid robot, built in a partnership between NASA and General Motors. Robonaut 2, which is scheduled to be launched into orbit on the Space Shuttle Discovery on Feb. 24, is already known (at least on this blog) for going on a date with MSNBC reporter Stephanie Pappas. was filmed interacting with host Howie Long at a car dealership in Dallas last week. No word on exactly what the robot plans to do on the show (here’s to hoping “announce plans for world domination” isn’t in the cards), but when it reaches space, the machine is designed to be a robotic assistant for astronauts on the International Space Station.
One thing the robot won’t be doing is kicking field goals. The design is only humanoid from the chest up, with arms, fingers and a head but no legs. NASA engineers say that they hope to one day build on Robonaut 2 to allow the machine to move around the ISS and, potentially, outside of it for spacewalks.
If you want to get a little taste of the future with your football, the pregame show starts at 2 p.m. Eastern on Fox.

[via Space.com]

On January 25, 1921, the word “robot” was introduced to the world in Karel Capek’s play “R.U.R.” (Rossum’s Universal Robots). The play premiered in Prague in the Czech language, but it later came to New York in 1922 in English, and the term robot took off. 

Although Capek used the introduced the word in his play, he gives the actual credit to his brother, Josef Capek. The word stems from the Czech word robota meaning forced labor, drudgery, and servitude. In the play, Capek’s robots, which resemble humans and can think for themselves (so, today, they’d probably be called androids?), were created as a means of cheap labor. Eventualy, they rise up, kill all of the humans, and take over the world–that idea also took off: The Terminator, I, Robot, Transformers, etc.

Well, robotics have definitely come a long way since 1921 (and the fear that robots will take over the world has probably increased). We now have the ASIMO, BigDog, the Kawada HRPs, Roomba, and Pleo, and it just wouldn’t be the same if we didn’t call them “robots.”

Happy 90th Birthday, Robot!