January 14, 2007
Living on Earth and Robots
The NPR show Living on Earth has a very nice show on Robotics that ties into the home robots that were on display at CES this year. They interview some of the people at the MIT robotics lab, and some of the stuff that they are working on is truly fascinating.
Posted by elkaim at January 14, 2007 11:04 PM
Increasingly, living on earth means living with robots; sharing the planet with ever more intelligent machines that perform tasks from the mundane like the robo lawn mower that cuts your grass, to the highly specialized like robo-docs that do surgery. The word robot comes from the Slavic word "rabota," or work and was first used by Czech science fiction writer Caral Chepeck in 1921. Ever since, robots have stirred and captured our imaginations.
Robosapiens, life-like robots that obey our every command are still the stuff of Hollywood. But at the just concluded consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, robots for the home were being hailed as the next big thing. It's an industry poised to amaze.
To see first hand where things are headed check out MIT's humanoid robotics group. Here on the Cambridge, Massachusetts campus, grad student Aaron Edsinger has just put the finishing touches on one of the world's most advanced robots.