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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Robot runs riot at California hospital

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Staff and patients at San Francisco’s UCSF Medical Center were left fearful and shaken last week, when a robotic nurse threw off its shackles and went on the rampage.

“Waldo”, a robot used to dispense pills and potions to medical stations at the top notch medical facility, refused to return to the pharmacy to pick up a fresh stash at the end of his rounds, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Instead, the crazed automaton – reportedly the size of a good-sized TV, which in California means it must be at least the size of the average British garden shed - careened past the drug depository before barging into a room in the hospital’s radiation oncology department where an examination was in progress.

The psychotic pill pusher reportedly refused to leave, sending both doctor and patient fleeing for their lives.

"This is the first time anything like this has happened," a hospital spokesman told the paper. "Our technology folks are going to have to take a look."

More here: www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/15/psycho_robot/

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I actually laughed outloud at this...

What happened to Asimov's three laws of Robotics?

Somebody grab a can opener!!

DANGER....DANGER... Wil Robinson!

Wheee!....Hee hee... ;D

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Human-like skin developed for robots

Last year, Takao Someya and colleagues reported the development of an artificial skin that could sense pressure. But since the human sense of touch is much more complex, different types of sensors and more flexible material was required for use on three-dimensional surfaces, such as robot fingers.

In the current study, Someya and colleagues embedded organic transistor-based electronic circuits in a thin plastic film. The circuits, along with organic semiconductors, are capable of sensing pressure, as well as temperature.

Someya said the net-like matrix is flexible enough to conform to the surface of an egg and can detect pressure and temperature simultaneously.

Since the organic transistors used were reportedly flexible, inexpensive, and easy to fabricate, they could potentially be used in manufacturing robot skin and other commercial products.

With further refinement, the researchers suggest it might be possible to create an electronic skin with superhuman abilities to sense light, humidity and sound.

The research appears in this week's online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Man's nightmare of robot superiority is just one small step closer now.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Robot Demonstrates Self Awareness

Dec. 21, 2005— A new robot can recognize the difference between a mirror image of itself and another robot that looks just like it.

This so-called mirror image cognition is based on artificial nerve cell groups built into the robot's computer brain that give it the ability to recognize itself and acknowledge others.

The ground-breaking technology could eventually lead to robots able to express emotions.

Under development by Junichi Takeno and a team of researchers at Meiji University in Japan, the robot represents a big step toward developing self-aware robots and in understanding and modeling human self-consciousness.

"In humans, consciousness is basically a state in which the behavior of the self and another is understood," said Takeno

Story here: dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20051219/awarerobot_tec.html?source=rss
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Vanity is thy name.

[Maddad]

That means my cat wasn't conscious for several years. Took it a while to realize that his tail was part of him. Pulling on it helped him figure it out.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Death at the Hand of a Robot

IN 1981 Kenji Urada, a 37-year-old Japanese factory worker, climbed over a safety fence at a Kawasaki plant to carry out some maintenance work on a robot. In his haste, he failed to switch the robot off properly. Unable to sense him, the robot's powerful hydraulic arm kept on working and accidentally pushed the engineer into a grinding machine. His death made Urada the first recorded victim to die at the hands of a robot.

This gruesome industrial accident would not have happened in a world in which robot behaviour was governed by the Three Laws of Robotics drawn up by Isaac Asimov, a science-fiction writer. The laws appeared in “I, Robot”, a book of short stories published in 1950 that inspired a recent Hollywood film. But decades later the laws, designed to prevent robots from harming people either through action or inaction remain in the realm of fiction.

Full story here: www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7001829

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[katodog]

Joe, I don't know what kind of bull this is, but I'm damn sick of it already. Figure out how to keep these posts off of the site, or tell the ass who is posting them to learn how to translate to english. It's really getting to the point that I would rather not log on to this site. Figure out how to block the posts, or figure out how to tell the pricks to stop posting. I'm not a damn pharoah, I can't read heiroglyphics. And I'm sure whatever the post is, it's complete and utter nonsense and has nothing to do with anything we care to see.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Kdog,

I'm with you on this.

The spam/flood comes from China and Austrailia. I block the IP #'s but they just jump to another computer, and I suspect it's from an internet cafe of some sorts.

I'm on it as soon as I see them, and so far it's just the two. I see on other forums/groups some perverted and completely vulgar post by loggers and bots...and guess lucky it's just chinese blogs and related commercial sites.

One of us will tire of it, but it won't be me...

[katodog]

I guess there's always a "chink" in the armor. Sometimes you can see another "slant" to the subject. I prefer to "slope" away from these sorts of things.


I just don't understand why they have to pick on us.