I’m sure I remember the story coming up on the news, but couldn’t find it with a quick Google, so maybe my internal storage is corrupted.
kapok or similar cushion-fluff to block the engine intakes, then. Ok, now we needs to McGuyver us a delivery system.
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Took 'em forty-some years to figure that out, though.
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Nah, it’s been there for a while, it’s just that one scene of Tom Baker taunting the Daleks stuck in people’s memories better than the scenes of Dalek anti-gravity in Planet of the Daleks and Remembrance of the Daleks. Also, you know, BBC budgets.
Yhey had, like, flying disk things they chased folks about on as well, I recall. I dunno from new Dr Who, though. Not watched much of it.
You know, the longer I think along these lines … it actually seems increasingly probable.
In the long run, if you are able to upload your self into circuitry it would make perfect sense to put it in a mobile unit.
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“I don’t know; maybe eyeball jelly makes good blade wax.”
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Boston Dynamics makes robots that walk really well in rough terrain. Sure they’ve made them for the miltary, but it isn’t too hard to think of useful and good purposes for robots that can walk in rough terrain: search and rescue; operating in radiation zones. Hell I wouldn’t be surprised if the first purpose is to get “street view” on the sides of mountains, etc.
This should end well.
Rudy, any thoughts?
“Search and rescue” is robotics industry code for “search and destroy.” Every time I hear some researcher talk about how the robot they’re developing could be used for search and rescue, it feels like they’re trying really, really hard to make their Defense Department-funded robotics work seem humane and friendly, even though they know it’s not going to be used that way. Granted, there potentially are other uses for these robots, but in this case the vast majority of the market and the contracts Boston Dynamic have are with the military. (How many robots is anyone buying for working in radiation zones? How many are the Pentagon buying?) That’s what they’re designing for, and everything else is “off label” use, really - they’d be re-purposed military bots. I think it’s going to take a while before the technology has developed to the point where there are a significant number of non-military uses.
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Man, somebody has been practicing QWOP.
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Oh man I wanna click that. Oh man I wanna click that.
The medical uses for such tech, even at low levels of complexity, are enormous. As you say, the tech hasn’t quite gotten there, although BD certainly isn’t the only company had at work on this stuff. My inner cynic agrees that military use will reign supreme and that we might should be a little worried about it.
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no no… you see, “robot” is derived from a Czech word meaning “slave”. They’re not “slaves” so please, in the future please refer to them as android or automaton.
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I believe the Chech word translates more correctly as “worker”.
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How does this at all jive with “Don’t be evil?”
The weird thing is, these guys were basically working on low-rent Roomba clones for years, until there was some sort of kerfluffle at one of their assembly plants. Next thing you know, BD is churning out all these amazing robot advances that seem like they came from the future.
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Aircraft deploy chaff and flares, submarines deploy decoys. The idea is that the sensory equipment in the missile, torpedo or whatever confuses the decoy with the target. This should be an option against robots too.
I beg to differ. If G00gle was a person I’d say they already score 15 out of 20 on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist.
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Slightly unrelated: The Czech/Slovak word for “slave” is the same as “[small] child” in Slovenian (“otrok”). Giddy tourist from the two countries buy up all the “Baby On Board” car signs when they come through Slovenia.
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