Killer Robots

A Swedish robot nearly killed a man, but won’t be prosecuted.

The near-fatal incident took place at a factory north of Stockholm in June 2007. A worker was about to fix a broken rock-lifting robot. He’d shut the power off, but the machine suddenly woke up and grabbed the man by the head… "But the robot suddenly came to life and grabbed a tight hold of the victim’s head. The man succeeded in defending himself but not before suffering serious injuries."

This week, Johansson decided not to prosecute either the company that owned the factory or its robot. Instead, the company will have to pay a $3,000 fine.

Time to start buying that robot insurance people.

Another piece of the puzzle comes together as a bunch of scientists in Switzerland invented robots that "lie" to each other to get food. Seriously, why not just give them the planet now and save us the trouble…

An Artificial Intelligence system has cracked a code that humans have been unable to crack for 4,000 years. According to the article, some linguists had given up and thought the symbols were just "pretty pictures". I wonder how long until AI discovers that it’s smarter than us.

Be very afraid.

According to Reuters columnist Bernd Debusmann, "military robots and their rapidly increasing numbers" and at a conference this Month, Brookings scholar Peter Singer said "Science fiction is moving to the battlefield. The future is upon us."

Sometimes I wonder if I’m the last sane person on Earth.

Seriously?
SERIOUSLY?!@?

In what universe is this a good idea? Let’s make humans food for robots! Freaking vampire robots, that’s what we need!

I think I saw this movie. It was called ‘The Matrix’.

Yeast cells feeding on the glucose in human blood might one day power implants such as pacemakers. A living source of power that is able to regenerate itself would eliminate the need for regular operations to replace batteries.
A team at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, has created tiny microbial fuel cells by encapsulating yeast cells in a flexible capsule. They went on to show the fuel cells can generate power from a drop of human blood plasma.

The Japanese always try to make the robots look cool, just look at the names they’ve picked for this one. But really, this thing’s just one step closer to cyborgs.

Is it me, or does this look like a hybrid of RoboCop and Voltron characters?

It starts with robots being used for exacting, and repetitive work, and then move to assisting humans in completing tasks. Next thing you know, they’re signing you up for cerebral port to connect you to the network.

… had gone to see a team of Japanese engineers from the company proudly showing off their new mobility technology — a pair of wearable robotic “Walking Assist Devices.” Strapping the powered gadgets to our legs felt silly, but after taking them off, the sensation of being cast back among unaugmented humans, forced to walk completely under our own primitive power, was a distinct comedown.

One way or another, the Terminators are coming. Check it out:

They have no fear, they never tire, they are not upset when the soldier next to them gets blown to pieces. Their morale doesn’t suffer by having to do, again and again, the jobs known in the military as the Three Ds – dull, dirty and dangerous.

From the article in Wired:

Stopping the pirates of Somalia hasn’t been easy. But when the navies of the world have repelled or killed the hijackers, it’s often involved three elements: helicopters, drones, and trained snipers. The U.S. Army is working on a weapon which combines all three.

This should go awesomely.

Scientists in Japan have invented a self-aware baby robot seal that reacts to human voice and touch. They insist it helps “heal” the elderly. I’m convinced this is a recon team.