New York Times on the Real Transformers

Posted 31 Jul 2007 at 17:08 UTC by steve

A lengthy New York Times article by Robin Marantz Henig offers an overview of the state of real world robots to be found in research labs. She visits the robot labs of MIT to see Mertz, Kismet, Leo, and other social robots. She talks to Rodney Brooks about his "scientific midlife crisis". She mentions historical robots like Elktro and talks with Sherry Turkle about the danger of robot boyfriends. There is also a discussion of robot self-awareness, consiousness, and emotion in robots. About the only thing not covered in this article is transformers or other shape-shifting robots.

Quite good, posted 1 Aug 2007 at 10:03 UTC by c6jones720 » (Master)

I though that was quite good and well balanced. I especially liked the comments about the uncanny valley aspect of androids. There is an interesting bit in there where Rodney Brooks is quoted as saying we have ended up programming robots and computers the way we do because we do it in a way “highly educated male scientists found challenging.”. <- That has never dawned on me before.