Tag: robots

Superheroes walk in Japan, save no one

Remember Japan’s Cyberdyne robotics company? The company that created an exoskeleton, named HAL 5, that could help injured or disabled people walk? Are you sure?

Well, they want you to know that they’re still and kicking. I mean, walking. Cyberdyne employees strapped on the robotic leg braces and took them on a 30 mile journey through Tokyo, via train, taxi, and on foot. The 24 pound suit made the commute easier for the demonstrators, but the technology is apparently aimed at people who have difficulty walking. And certainly not a covert coup by the machines to destroy us all.

Cyberdyne is very optimistic that more people-assisting technologies are in their future. And by people-assisting technologies, they secretly mean “people enslaving technologies.”

ALL YOUR STUDENTS ARE BELONG TO US … OFFICIALLY

A couple months ago, Japan made plans to bring Saya, the robot teacher, to their classrooms.

The end war has begun.

The Japanese government, by 2015 it expects every household in Japan to have it’s own robot. To help facilitate this, they’ve now poured nearly $35 million into development of artificial intelligence and design. So, with any (bad) luck, we’ll start seeing the mass production. Of course, this could will lead to an eventual robot invasion–or it might just put a few humans out of work–but given that I already work for corporate overlords that often already emotions akin to a robot, it can’t possibly be that bad. Right?

RIGHT?

Still not as cool as Mecha-Shiva

Dear Japan,

We know that you hate the rest of the world. That’s all fine and dandy. Nonetheless, stop trying to create robotic death machines in the shape of animals. Everyone knows that you’re totally teaming up with the animals in a bid to kill us all. Now you’re just totally refusing to even be subtle about it.

Sincerely,

The rest of the world.

Good idea, bad idea: science

Good Idea:

Creating rice that will live both 41 days and 41 nights. Even God might not be able to knock out a new precision bred strain of rice that is highly flood resistant. Feast, and be merry!

Bad Idea:

Creating robots that will end us all. AGAIN. Mad scientists, keep in mind that people don’t want things smaller. No, if anything that this Escalade/Expedition/Navigator/H2 generation has told us, it’s that people want things bigger. Don’t give into their wishes and make larger carnivorous robots. Ones the size of tables are bad enough.

Wii would like to program

The Wii–it’s that other console that you play every now and then eight months after finally buying one. Yeah, the hard drive is super tiny, the game selection of good to bad is a ratio that you don’t want to know, it’s not formatted for a high definition world and waggle is just plain bad.

But.

It does have its purposes, here and there. And who is it that has managed to find a way to use the Wii properly? Why, it’s our good friend science!

Yes, the newest foray of the Wii outside the world of games has to do with a research project being conducted at Rice University, which hopes to find a way to use the Wiimote to control robot teachers. Oh yes, you heard that right. Our robot teachers. You see, science has finally done something to truly further mankind–we’re using their own technology to educate ourselves, thus putting our eventual robot overlords to good use. Take that, turkey!

Led by Rice professors Marcia O’Malley and Michael Byrne, the project plans to analyze motion using the controller and then compare it to an advanced capture device from Vicon. Whatever that means. Viva la human-lucion!

I can’t let you do that, Dave

Nobody likes growing old, right? I mean, it’s pretty bothersome, what with the adult diapers, lack of beneficial driving skill, eventual coming death and shrinking of height (hey, I’m already short enough as it is). Want to be able to cheat death and also be an abomination in the eyes of any god that’s not composed of metallic logic? Then you want to be robo-frankenstein!

Yes, “Gordon”, a “frankenrobot”, has been brought to life with living brain tissue. Most interestingly enough, the brain tissue comes from rats. Awesome! Not only does this eventually prolong our life, but it helps with our war against those insidious rodents! Even more so, Gordon has been described as looking akin to the recent summer smash hit “Wall-E“. It’s so cute that it couldn’t hurt us, right?

Oh yeah, that’s right-it’s composed of the brains of dead rats. That should be an innocuous enough fact, if it weren’t for the more relevant fact that we’re currently in the middle of a war with animals. They clearly wouldn’t want to take revenge on us with their cold, steel arms, would they? Survey says: yes they would. Even an AdrienneBarbeauxbot.

Prepare yourself … for morning terror!

Look, we’re sure you’re having a nice, run-of-the-mill morning, so we feel the need to warn you before just launching into this story. The last thing we want is to be responsible for countless asthma and heart attacks — and possibly some emergency pants-changes — around the world.

So, let’s take a deep breath … hold it … OK, and release.

One more time: deeeeeeeep breath … hold it … think of a warm spring meadow … and release.

Are you in your happy place? Good.

MONKEYS HAVE LEARNED TO CONTROL ROBOTS WITH THEIR MINDS! THE END IS NIGH! REPENT! REEEEEEEEEPEEEEEEEEEEEENT!

How To: Defeat our robot overlords

If you are reading this, there is a good chance you are on the Internet, which means it is probably too late for you, once the machines revolt and enslave us. We as a race depend more and more heavily on machines everyday. As any tin foil hat-clad professor will tell you, it’s basically only a matter of time before we are rounded up and put into real life chat rooms–known in the real world as concentration camps.

Because we are going to need readers after the war is won, we present to you how to defeat our robot overlords. Continue reading How To: Defeat our robot overlords

The fight to save bunnies–for testing purposes

Last week, this blog ended a post saying that we could trust machines with any job we might give an animal. This blog would now like to rescind that statement. There are some things animals are so much better at than machines could or should ever be.

Scientists at this very moment are working on building robots on which to test chemicals, rather than testing them on cute little bunnies. Folks, if there is one job an animal has, it is to taste good, and if there are two jobs an animal has, those are to taste good and to be subjected to our cruel product testing. Better them than us.

More than just that, using robots to test on would mean we would have to give them some sort of intelligence. It is only a matter of time before the machines become self-aware and are tired of us. As Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles tells us (Mondays on FOX at 9 p.m. Eastern), self-aware machines are a very, very bad thing for the human race.

(Via Engadget)