What happened to the Robot Age?

BBC News Magazine ^ | Friday, 27 January 2006, | Jonathan Duffy

[Cyber Liberty]

Robotics and automation are alive and well. I live them every day, for I am the ghost in my own machine.

[Dumb_Ox]

They'll yearn for an age without robots once my vast army of android soldiers enslaves them. Fools! I'll destroy them all!

[Cyber Liberty]

I've been wanting one of those. Did they fix the battery problem? If they did, it's mine, tomorrow.

[theFIRMbss]

>What happened to the Robot Age?

[Sensei Ern]

I would like to buy a robot that I could use in my place on an assembly line. The bot could make me $30K per year and in 5 years, it would pay for itself. I could then buy more and soon would be filthy rich on the backs of robots.

[Cyber Liberty]

Roomba. Should I buy one for my wife's birthday?

[Cyber Liberty]

Think about how a robot could duplicate your actions. Make a good business case for it to your boss.

Make sure you are in charge of maintenance!

[Cyber Liberty]

BS. We could round up a million illegal aliens, and they could never duplicate what I program robots to do.

[rightwingcrazy]

Supposedly, if you have the money, it's yours, courtesy of Neiman Marcus

[11Bush]

Great, we got the homos in hot pants but no robot overlords. We was robbed.

[theFIRMbss]

>Roomba. Should I buy one for my wife's birthday?

I don't think the gals
really want vacuum cleaners
for birthday presents . . .

[reformedliberal]

Tell us about the Roomba, please. I have been debating getting one. How do they do on the transition from hardwood to area carpet, for example? Do they do a thorough job? Any major problems or disappointments? I have a rural, high traffic home and some rooms are still wall-to-wall carpeting.

[Ben Ficklin]

Nanobots

[Jonah Hex]

By comparison, the two robots used by Prof Dautenhahn's team are almost entirely functional and benign. They don't even have names - that would threaten the dispassionate nature of the team's research.

Now see, there's the problem. They obviously don't have any real engineers working on the project. Any engineer worth his salt will name the device he's designing/building/trouble-shooting (and usually with a female name if she's acting persnickity or "evil").

;-)

[Oztrich Boy]

Nevere mind robots. Where's my flying car?

[meowmeow]

[Lakeside]

I absolutely love my Roomba. I have it set to vacuum in the middle of the night so I wake every morning to hardwood floors that are 'barefoot' clean. I'm saving my pennies for the Scooba, the one that mops floors, too.

[Phantom Lord]

Women should get items they both need and use for their birthdays. Like ironing boards.

[Conservative Firster]

Urban Aeronautics

[x]

It might seem as though the robot revolution we were promised 20 years ago has hit an almighty malfunction.

It's here.

But it's not like the authorities are going to let us keep real robots in our homes.

The powers that be are one step ahead of us and worried about a real "robot revolution."

All it takes is a few humans abusing their robots to spark a revolt that will shake our world to its very core.