Posted on 11/26/2009 8:01:06 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
November 26, 2009
Look out! The robots are coming to take your job away
For as long as anyone can remember, the Tokyo International Robot Exhibition has been a showcase for Japan at its wackiest: stern industrial machines lurked backstage as waltzing, noodle-making or ping-pong playing humanoids stole the limelight.
In recessionary 2009, however, with Japanese industry writhing in pain, the national robot obsession has turned deadly serious. For the first time, the show explains exactly how the machines are going to take over.
A new mood is in the air: the downturn, says a Tsukuba University engineer, has honed Japanese robotics research and forced it to be more practical. Companies and universities once given unlimited budgets to push the boundaries of robotics are being told to come up quickly with something usable and commercial. Toyota’s recent decision to pull out of Formula 1 was a hot topic of discussion: would its next cost-cutting move be to close the robotics division or would it still throw millions into perfecting a trumpet-playing automaton?
The fun stuff is played down, while potential uses of the robots are pushed to the front. This gives many of the companies a chance to show that the technology has been quietly improving by leaps and bounds. Getting a cute humanoid robot such as Honda’s Asimo to go from walking to running represents decades of effort, says a Tokyo University engineer, but the work of turning a machine into a better pizza maker than a human moves much faster. Japanese robots are being built with open software codes to encourage outside programmers to come up with ideas to make them even more useful.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Ping!
Ping!
Having worked with robots, I’m not too worried about them replacing humans anytime soon.
Learn to program them....or work in a buggy whip factory...the choice is yours....
In my estimation the painting robots I used to deal with were equal to about 1/3 of a painter. Their consistency was both an advantage and a disadvantage.
Robots will be licensed. And taxed.
No, it’s not in the Constitution.
Why is this a bad thing? The role of technology over history is to reduce mankind’s labors so there is more leisure time.
I’d like to see a robot follow me around for just one day and get it all done, LOL!
That thing would short-circuit in two minutes. :)
thanks, bfl
Yep, all the fat, lazy Americans are proof of that. We should all live in a world like the movie "Wall-E"...
Sorry, I don’t adapt Hollywood lefties’ world view as my own.
Got a good book to recommend? Say a 3rd gen language like C or better yet a 4th gen like Java? Thanks.
LOL it's already happening. Take a look around you when you're shopping today.
Python is a very interesting and accessible language.
I shop from home on the Internet! How lazy is that? :-)
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