The day of terminator is near? I love robots, even more so giant robots since I was a little kid. Too bad I didn't end up being a Robotics engineer. Well, just the thought of that would be really weird. Anyway, I end up design characters and creatures for video games instead of a real robot. I read WSJ about US military is ordering more robots this morning. So I thought, we might very close to the day of "Skynet" if we put all of these together. Or are we there?
Anyway, this post is not about me. It is about us and where we are heading with our robotic technology. Recently there is "Watson", a super computer from IBM on Jeopardy. Watson seems to represent a giant leap forward in the field of natural-language processing—the ability to understand and respond to everyday English. It's not a surprise to me that IBM's Watson super computer beat 2 of the greatest Jeopardy champs (humans) in three rounds of head to head action. What do we expect? Humans will win in memory contest over a computer? But anyway, that was impressive.
Other than the awesomeness of Watson, there are others. They might not be as smart, but they are the stepping stone to the T-days. Meet BIG DOG, BigDog is the alpha male of the Boston Dynamics robots. It is a rough-terrain robot that walks, runs, climbs and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by an engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system.
Below is the Big Dog video:
Other than big dog, now US military also commission Boston Dynamics, to develop two new robots: one will be a super fast quadruped called Cheetah, the other is a beautifully intricate, freakishly scary full-size humanoid called Atlas. Having seen all these, I am hopeful that I will get to see a fully function giant robot in my life time. Images are below.
Anyway, this post is not about me. It is about us and where we are heading with our robotic technology. Recently there is "Watson", a super computer from IBM on Jeopardy. Watson seems to represent a giant leap forward in the field of natural-language processing—the ability to understand and respond to everyday English. It's not a surprise to me that IBM's Watson super computer beat 2 of the greatest Jeopardy champs (humans) in three rounds of head to head action. What do we expect? Humans will win in memory contest over a computer? But anyway, that was impressive.
Here is WATSON
Other than the awesomeness of Watson, there are others. They might not be as smart, but they are the stepping stone to the T-days. Meet BIG DOG, BigDog is the alpha male of the Boston Dynamics robots. It is a rough-terrain robot that walks, runs, climbs and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by an engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system.
Below is the Big Dog video:
Other than big dog, now US military also commission Boston Dynamics, to develop two new robots: one will be a super fast quadruped called Cheetah, the other is a beautifully intricate, freakishly scary full-size humanoid called Atlas. Having seen all these, I am hopeful that I will get to see a fully function giant robot in my life time. Images are below.
"Cheetah"
"Atlas" or T-800?
Whao!
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