People who build robots say that, in the future, we’ll all have at least one of them working for us. They have learned that they need to create a kind of robot evolution in order to transform a basic robot into something effective for a specific task. Roboticist Josh Bongard created both simulated and actual robots that, like tadpoles becoming frogs, change their body forms while learning how to walk.
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Get a robot! – Most households have a refrigerator and vacuum cleaner, and the lucky ones have a dishwasher and clothes washer too. So how to impress the neighbors? Get your own robot.
If you hate tidying up a messy room, assembling a bookshelf from a kit of parts, fetching a hairbrush for someone who can’t do it herself or loading and unloading the dishwasher, scientists recommend the cure: A robot could do all this for you (and more).
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Another MOTKE prediction comes true – Stanley Kubrick’s movie “2001, a Space Odyssey,” made over 40 years ago, featured a nefarious, lying computer named “Hal.” Scientists are now creating robots that will be skilled in the art of deception and hope to use them to confuse enemies in battle. Are we moving a step towards Hal-like artificial life by recruiting robots as spies?
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Leave it up to a robot – We predict that the future will reveal a world filled with robots, and there are all kinds of them out there already. How do you teach someone to trust, especially someone who has been emotionally “burned” in the past? You get them a “trust robot.”
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