

A review of the best robots of 2009 - limist
http://singularityhub.com/2009/12/22/a-review-of-the-best-robots-of-2009/

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limist
This article's closing text also references the intriguing term describing our
emotional/psychological response range to humanoid robots, the Uncanny Valley:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley>

I'm now curious of my own reaction if had a life-life robot right in front of
me. There's a great line from the movie A.I. where Gigolo Joe's character (a
robot) asks rhetorically, "Do you know why they hate us? It's because they
made us too smart, and immortal."

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ramchip
> The dry adhesive technique uses micro-hairs and _intramolecular (van der
> waals) forces_ to stick bot to wall.

It doesn't change the article much, but something went wrong there.
Journalists, check what the keywords mean!

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statictype
At the risk of beating a dead horse,

I think we could be making much more advances in robotics if we dispense of
the notion that robots should be bipedal and look like humans.

~~~
asdflkj
Almost all robots doing work today look nothing like humans. The neat thing
about humanoidness is that it provides a benchmark for robotic technology that
any technically-minded person can understand.

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limist
The video of the Quattro s650, claimed as the world's fastest packing/sorting
robot, is particularly impressive as it handles a surprisingly large variety
of objects.

