DailyDirt: Robots That Move (Sometimes In A Creepy Way)
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
There's an uncanny valley for artificially-generated images that look almost too human. And as robots become more advanced, they could also go through their own version of an uncanny valley. Here are some projects that might be creating some creepy-looking robots.- Japanese researchers have created autonomous robots roughly the size of a 7-month-old and a 13-month-old baby -- which also try to move like human babies. Baby Terminators are so cute and don't look at all threatening, do they? [url]
- The GoQBot mimics a caterpillar for its method of locomotion by performing ballistic rolling. This 10-centimeter-long robot can roll away surprisingly fast when it balls up. [url]
- Robots that can slither through granular materials might be useful for disaster recovery efforts. Given the fate of NASA's Mars rover Spirit, sand-swimming robots could also be useful for extraterrestrial terrains. [url]
- To discover more interesting robot-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]
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Filed Under: ballistic rolling, caterpillars, goqbot, robots, terminators
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Creepy Robots Go Back Over Half A Century
In the book he casually mentions that one of his machines was so eerily lifelike, it drove a certain woman (presumably his wife) to run upstairs and lock herself in her room.
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