National Taiwan University Develops a Leg-Wheel Hybrid Mobile Robot Using LabVIEW. Festo - Bionic Handling Assistant. Robotics Daily. Artificial Intelligence and Robots in Movies - Robotics AI Timeline. Whether it's built from steel plate and circuit boards or slabs of reanimated flesh, if a robot has artificial intelligence, according to the cultural myth, that machine has the ability to be a monster. Sometimes the AI's problem is that it's not intelligent enough, triggering murderous glitches as in the legendary Golem of Prague or Robocop's ED-209 armed security bot. More often the threat of AI is its dark brilliance, from the blackmail scheme concocted by Frankenstein's self-loathing monster to the grotesque battery-slave camps of The Matrix. The fear of AI is different from concerns over genetic modification, self-replicating nanobots or other potentially slippery technological slopes, says Patrick Lin, an assistant professor of philosophy at California Polytechnic State University, who is developing ethical guidelines for robots for the United States Navy.
Golem of Prague (1600's) Crimes: ManslaughterTaught us to fear: Unstable artificial intelligence Frankenstein's Monster (1818) AlphaDog Proto. Talking Robot Mouth Mimics Human Speech. High-Speed Robot Hand. Robot hummingbird passes flight tests (w/ Video) (PhysOrg.com) -- A prototype robot spy "ornithopter," the Nano-Hummingbird, has successfully completed flight trials in California. Developed by the company AeroVironment Inc., the miniature spybot looks like a hummingbird complete with flapping wings, and is only slightly larger and heavier than most hummingbirds, but smaller than the largest species. The Hummingbird's bird-shaped body is removable but it gives the bot an uncanny resemblance to a real hummingbird. The vehicle can hover and maneuver just like the bird. The ornithopter can fly into buildings under the control of an operator flying the spybot with the help of a feed from its tiny video camera.
The prototype is capable of flying at speeds of up to 18 km/h (11 mph) and weighs 19 grams, which is about the same as an AA battery. Manager of the project, Matt Keennon, said it had been a challenge to design and build the spybot because it “pushes the limitations of aerodynamics.” More information: www.avinc.com/nano.