Robot of the Week Returns! – Cue the violins!
I imported all the posts from my previous blog A Transparent Life, and was reminded of an old feature I had there called Robot of the Week. I’d post a youtube video of some interesting robot, and it would either be a springboard for some topic, or it would just be fun to look at.
I was sad to discover many of those old videos are no longer available from youtube due to copyright challenges. I doubt anyone anywhere was losing any money over a couple minutes of robot demo video being viewable online.
To obtain vengeance, I’m starting the feature again. So, for the relaunch of Robot of the Week I’d like to introduce you to the worlds most sophisticated and expensive player piano:
Now, that’s neat for sure, and one day it will even be good at the violin – but this is the ethical equivalent of dressing a monkey in overalls and teaching it to smoke a cigar. Amusing to humans, but not what robots are for!
I wonder what insight there is to be gained from designing a humaniform violin playing machine? Probably it’s a good platform to experiment with coordinated finger-like manipulation. But I think equally or more complex multi-digit coordination is probably already commonplace in industrial assembly line robots.
He’s cute, but we are not impressed.
Look for posts in the same categories: Robot of the Week!