A review of the best robots of 2009

[limist]

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

[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."

[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!

[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.

[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 → statictype]

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.