Monday, January 21, 2008
Vive la Robot Revolution
A rare treat for you, dear readers: a sample of my "real" writing. Here's a link to a PDF of a magazine article I recently wrote about local robotics research.
The part I want you to notice, near the end of the article, is the virtual reality research, which isn't really robotics at all be I'll get back to it. What these guys have whipped up is a holodeck-style set-up in which you can walk in place, never leaving the same spot in the real world but feeling as though you are walking in a 3-D virtual reality world. Pretty cool.
But wait, there's more. Here's a link to a recent news article about American and Japanese researchers working on, essentially, remote mind-control of robot parts. They implanted electrodes into the area of a monkey's brain that controls walking. Then they put the monkey on a treadmill. The signals were then transmitted to a facility in Japan that had a set of robot legs hooked up to a treadmill. Result: the robot legs moved at the same time and the same pace as the monkey's.
The ultimate goal of this research is to develop exo-skeletal robot legs to allow paraplegics to walk. They figure they should have a working prototype within a year.
A year! Paraplegia (or, at least, paraplegic wheelchairs) could be on the road to being a thing of the past within a year.
But now add these two bits together. It stands to reason that, now that they've got the whole electrode-mind-control technology worked out, everything else from there is just a function of engineering. So it shouldn't be too long before they can build complete robot avatars for people.
Imagine this: you're getting old and can't get around much. So, just hook yourself up to a virtual reality headset, boot up your robot "self" and head out for a stroll to the corner store.
Imagine how it could revolutionize work places. Just leave a robot version of yourself at the office and you can remote control him from home in your 'jammies.
Or tourism. Want to see Paris but can't afford the airfare? Just plunk down $50 at your local VirtualTourist booth and you can take a real-time, 3-D stroll down the Champs Elysees on your way home from work. You can even go shopping and have it shipped to yourself at home.
The possibilities are endless and mind-boggling.
I suppose the brain surgery to get all those electrodes implanted would be a bugger, but I'm sure they're working on that too.
posted by Mentok @ 11:18 a.m.,
6 Comments:
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At 8:37 a.m.,
cchang said...
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That is mind boggling. I've always wanted to climb Mt. Everest for shits and giggles but have been too chicken to do so (or perhaps I'd rather not die doing such an attempt). I could just throw on my robot suit and be done with it. If my robot dies, no biggie...
Wow. Prototype within a year. That's crazy! Thanks for linking to your PDF by the way. -
At 10:50 a.m.,
Grumps said...
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But what if the robots decide they want to live their own lives and rebel against the human slaves? Then, hundreds of years from now, Charlton Heston will discover a planet where robots use humans to fulfill their fantasies. Damned dirty robots!
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At 11:58 a.m.,
Mentok said...
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cindy - wow, that mountain climbing idea is a great one. And can't you just hear all those mountain climbing snobs cursing about how "those damn robots are ruining Everest".
I should point out that the PDF is one of my rough drafts. I just got it back fr. proofreaders today with many red marks, so I'll post up a better one soon.
Grumps - as funny as that sounds, you never hear about artificial intelligence researchers doing anything to limit the independence of AI systems. I'm sure all those guys have seen the Matrix, but in true human fashion they seem to have just decided to ignore the implications of their work. -
At 1:15 p.m.,
said...
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stephen colbert had a guy on last week who wrote a book called "love and sex with robots: the evolution of human-robot relationships" that went on to declare that in the near future--20 to 50 years--people will be loving and having sex with robots instead of people (if they choose to, or if they can't find a suitable human). it was pretty funny, mostly because the guy was actually serious. colbert was hilarious.
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At 1:26 p.m.,
Grumps said...
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Forget the robots, Mentok and worry about the weather. We got it and it's coming your way. All I can say is "hurricane coming, hurricane coming!"
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At 4:13 p.m.,
Mentok said...
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That's funny, I was just thinking of that line...
All I can say in response is "whoppah, whoppah,whoppah cheese, whoppah, whoppah"
(for the rest of you, these are both lines connected to funny incidents during a trip to New York that Grumps and I took when we were mere boys.)
