Giant Freakin Robot

People use the phrase “drink like a fish” without thinking about what it really means. They’re only taking one part of the equation into consideration. What we should be saying is, “Get hungover like a fish,” since fish never seem to be hungover. Perhaps we need to rethink the entire drinking thing. But that just sounds like sobriety.

After noticing that zerbrafish were oblivious when a crudely painted robo-fish was added into the mix, NYU-Poly’s Dynamic Systems Lab director Maurizio Porfiri began experimenting by putting the fish into tanks filled with varying amounts of ethanol. Sure, it was to test the level of companionship and attention given to the robo-fish, but also because all the fish’s older brothers and best friends said they would be total spazzes if they didn’t get ripped. (We picture this guy as the older brother.)

Strangely, the intoxication generally caused the fish to avoid contact with the robo-fish, which was made to resemble the opposite sex. They chose to swim around by themselves. Total loners, but with hearts of gold. Because this experiment successfully established a baseline for a controlled delivery of ethanol, it will serve as the foundation for further studies using the zebrafish, which have been a rising star in the scientific community as an alternative to the common lab mouse. Next up on the agenda is adding predators into the mix and testing reactions to danger. Just give them time to sober up first.

(Thanks to DVICE for the story, and for that one night in that Tijuana fish tank.)

I don’t know about you guys, but when I was a kid, my favorite part about watching The Jetsons was thinking about the future, when I’d be able to marry a beautiful wife and have two beautiful kids, all of whose names would appear in my opening theme song. Okay, okay, you got me. All I wanted was a talking dog and a robot maid. I’m only (a lazy) human!

It’ll still be a while before anything like Rosie comes around, but Computer Science assistant professor Ashutosh Saxena and a team at the Robot Learning Lab in the Computer Science Department at Cornell University have created a no-frills version of a robot servant that can actively anticipate certain needs. Don’t get me wrong, these are rudimentary needs, but it’s still pretty amazing.

Using the RGBD sensor inside an Xbox Kinect, Saxena and his team recorded a library of 3D videos uploaded into the robot’s “brain” that it can use to associate with real world actions. It’s also equipped with some kind of camera that allows it to take its own videos, thus increasing the amount of tasks it can understand. We’re still a ways from the assisted-aid robot in Robot & Frank, but this is a damned fine first step towards that goal.

This is the coolest, and most frightening, thing you’ll see all day. A group of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have taught their robot, an adorable little guy named RHex, how to run, jump, and climb in quick succession.

Why is this a big deal? Because up to now we’ve seen robots that can do one of these things, but most are unable to perform these actions in a rapid sequence. Animals can do it. So can people. Up till now, this has been one of the things that set us apart from our inevitable mechanical oppressors. Well, now that gap is being bridged, and we’re one step closer to our doom as a species.

Hopefully films like Pacific Rim will remain limited to the realm of science fiction, because if giant monsters ever did come through a rift beneath our oceans, the amount of political and bureaucratic bullshit that would have to happen before any Giant Freakin’ Robots got built would almost be a bigger headache than the monster threat itself.

But while banning enormous, trans-dimensional monsters might seem arbitrary in our current times, getting rid of killer robots of any size has become a major issue for world leaders. The recently formed Stop the Killer Robot campaign has found its biggest sponsor in the United Nations, which joined the fight last week in the form of a draft report for the U.N. Human Rights Commission, which will almost certainly take up a lot of talking time during the Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva, Switzerland on May 29th.

The report’s author, South African human rights law professor Christof Heyns, is straight up calling for a global moratorium on the “testing, production, assembly, transfer, acquisition, deployment and use” of lethal autonomous robotics (LARs). He isn’t solely worried about attacks from drones either, since those are controlled by humans more often than not.