We puny humans can be depressingly fragile and flawed, a realization that's all the more discouraging when we consider the incredible potential for robots. Here are 12 reasons why machines will always have the edge over us meatbags.
This man can pick up a 70-pound lump of metal like it's bag of groceries. But it's not because he's Iron Man—he just happens to be wearing a robotic suit that grants him immense strength.
A slightly uncomfortable and awkward thing—are those security cameras as heads, for christ's sake?—but they're real thing nonetheless. Behold, German pole dancing robots. They cost $40,000 each.
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Man versus machine. It's always the ultimate showdown, and in this case—where one of the world's best table tennis players, Timo Boll, goes against one of the fastest ping pong machines out there—it makes for an intense match.
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This looks like something you'd find in the Hot Wheels aisle at Walmart, but it's much more than that. It's a character from Anki Drive, an iOS-powered tech toy coming to Apple Stores and Apple.com on October 23. Its creators call it "the future of consumer electronics."
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In popular free iPhone app 1to50, players have to sequentially press the numbers one through fifty as fast as they possibly can. No one is ever going to be this robot's score.
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One thing ever fledgling robotic killing machine needs is a good pair of hands, deft enough to type but strong enough to choke the life out of its victims. Virginia Tech's DART is a good start.
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Almost two millennia before the rest of humanity entered the industrial age, the Greek inventor Hero invented the steam engine, wind-powered machinery, and theories of light that couldn't be improved for centuries. And then he invented some really crazy stuff.
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Teaching a robot to recognize symbols is one thing; teaching a robot to actually read and understand those symbols is another thing entirely, but researchers in the UK are getting the job done, thanks to a little artificial intuition.
While other researchers are busy teaching robots how to lie, professor Susan Anderson and her husband Michael have taught a robot how to behave ethically. I know which team is getting my research dollar.
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The only thing I can imagine that would be more exciting than racing a Ferrari F2007 at high speeds, is pretending to drive a Ferrari F2007 at high speeds while being swung about by a giant robot arm.
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Meet Robonaut 2, the most dexterous humanoid robot in existence, soon to be the first humanoid robot in space, and you'll be able to hear all about it through his Twitter account.
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Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have trained monkeys to manipulate robotic appendages using the power of their minds, once again proving one solid scientific fact: monkeys kick ass.
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These science posts at Kotaku give me an opportunity to talk about something near and dear to my heart: The Robot menace. A Japanese couple being married by a robot? What if it misinterprets "til death do us part?"
