In 2021, robots can be forklifts or machine tools, surgical instruments or bomb defusers. As a viral video showed this month, a new, human-shaped model from Boston Dynamics can even dance to the Motown song "Do You Love Me?" But when the Czech writer Karel Capek coined the word "robot" in his play "R.U.R.," which made its debut in Prague 100 years ago this month, he had something much grander in mind: a new, man-made species, capable of tireless labor but also love, hope and self-sacrifice.
This may worth something:
'Outside the Wire' Review: At War With the Robots - The New York Times
The cinematographer Michael Bonvillain maps the shaky-camera style he used on "Cloverfield" — what Roger Ebert at the time called " Queasy-Cam "— onto the firefights in "Outside the Wire" to bewildering results. The film's opening siege, for instance, depicting a platoon's battle to recover a fallen comrade trapped in a crossfire, is spatially uncertain. Grainy establishing shots of the skirmish offer little visual information other than its location on an expressway.
Ultraviolet robots helping keep things sanitized
MADISON, Miss. (WLBT) - A Madison company is shedding some light on how to clean more effectively in the age of coronavirus.
Cleaners don't need to expose themselves to a potential infection, because a robot will do the work for them!
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Tony Gines of Ultraviolet CDE Sanitation gave a demonstration at the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame.
"You can program the robot to come off of the station, let's say if the mall closes at 9 o'clock and 10 o'clock, you have that robot programmed to come off that station," Gines said. "It will go around and sanitize the entire building, whether it's upstairs or downstairs, and then it will go back to its charging base at the end of the sanitation period."
San Antonio Spurs Deploy Xenex Germ-Zapping Robots; First NBA Team to Use LightStrike Robots to
San Antonio – January 14, 2021 – The 2020-21 NBA season is underway and the San Antonio Spurs have added powerful new teammates with extraordinary germ -zapping capabilities. As part of its comprehensive strategy to minimize risk for fans, arena employees, team personnel and players from exposure to SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), the Spurs purchased LightStrike ™ Germ -Zapping Robots™ to disinfect rooms and areas within the AT&T Center.
Quite a lot has been going on:
‘Sci-Tech Robots’ make a friend – Daily Democrat
There's only one thing cooler than having a successful 2020 Robots Read program at Sci-Tech Academy and that's having the author himself reach out and volunteer to be part of the experience.
Author Patrick Jennings, a resident of Port Townsend, Washington, came across an article in The Daily Democrat recently about Sci-Tech's annual One School, One Book program called “Robots Read.”
To Patrick’s surprise and delight, Sci-Tech had chosen his book, “We Can't All Be Rattlesnakes,” to be this year's read. He immediately reached out to Sci-Tech staff asking "How can I join in the fun?"
CES 2021: Robots that vacuum, set the table, do dishes and pour wine
Even though the event is virtual, CES delivers no shortage of big screens or nifty gadgets. But let's be real: both of those are lame compared to the robots.
Every year, tech lovers are wooed to CES by the prospects of a digital future inching closer towards that of The Jetsons: with cars taking to the skies and robots tending to our needs.
We're still years away from the flying cars , but finding robots to help us with everyday chores, and maybe offer us a little companionship, might be closer than we think.
Free exchange - New research shows the robots are coming for jobs—but stealthily | Finance &
T HE YEAR is 2021, and honestly there ought to be more robots. It was a decade ago that two scholars of technology, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, published "Race Against the Machine", an influential book that marked the start of a fierce debate between optimists and pessimists about technological change. The authors argued that exponential progress in computing was on the verge of delivering explosive advances in machine capabilities.
Economists have, on the whole, been fairly sanguine about the impact of robots and AI on workers. History is strewn with incorrect predictions of the looming irrelevance of human labour. The economic statistics have yet to signal the arrival of a robot-powered job apocalypse. Outside of slumps, firms remain keen to hire humans, for example. Growth in productivity—which ought to be surging if machines are helping fewer workers produce more output—has been unimpressive.
Swarms of robotic fish can synchronize their swimming, for the first time | Science | AAAS
Swimming in sync is one of the most important lessons a school of fish can learn: The coordination helps them find food—and evade predators. But when scientists try to train robots to match this stunning natural feat, most fall short. Now, researchers have developed a fleet of seven underwater "fishbots" that can swim in circles—without crashing into one another.
Most robot swarms coordinate their movements via a centralized computer that tells them where to go, in the form of GPS coordinates. But researchers wanted the robots to control their own movements. Inspired by two of the ways fish sense their neighbors—bioluminescence and vision—researchers outfitted fish-shaped underwater robots with two wide-angle cameras, one in each "eye," and bright blue light-emitting diode lights.
Happening on Twitter
The word "robot" was born 100 years ago this month. Ever since, robots have been one of our favorite ways of thinki… https://t.co/2LrXNc5eGM WSJ (from New York, NY) Sat Jan 16 07:30:10 +0000 2021
Robots Turn 100 and Still #Enthrall Us https://t.co/hUfCAduVsK #fintech #AI #ArtificialIntelligence… https://t.co/eYrO8uGo3x SpirosMargaris (from All Over the World) Sat Jan 16 17:12:59 +0000 2021
