Word: robotical
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...always wanted a robot. So many drudge jobs in my life--doing the dishes, making coffee, harassing office neighbor Joel Stein--could just as easily be relegated to an R2D2-like servant. Until recently, though, the only robots I ever saw were in movies or, worse, in those spacecraft that carry aliens who abduct you and prod you with metallic objects that leave no visible scars...
...BEST FRIEND Looking for the perfect pet, one that never slobbers, growls or barks in the night? Meet Sony's AIBO (Artificial Intelligence Robot), a foot-tall plastic pup, powered by computer chip, that can walk, sit, lie down, even raise a paw in the air. Stroke a sensor on its head, and AIBO wags its tail; throw a ball, and a digital camera in its snout will track it. A remote control turns it left or right. Available at www.world.sony.com/robot/for $2,500, AIBO costs more than most purebreds. But it doesn't shed, can't dig holes...
...Premise Adapted from a Ted Hughes novel, young Hogarth Hughes befriends a 50-foot robot he finds near his Maine home and tries to protect him from the adults who try to destroy...
...hard to find anything without an imbedded microchip. Mattel's X3 Microscope ($100) comes with a built-in digital camera and hooks up to a PC, so kids can view magnified objects through the scope's lens, then save the images on the computer. Meanwhile, Lego is unveiling its Robotics Discovery Set ($150), which lets kids age 9 and up build elaborate creations like a moving robot that can follow a flashlight in the dark. Companies that couldn't think of anything original this year are reinventing old favorites. Microsoft's line of ActiMates Interactive Teletubbies ($60) speak and sing...
What's more, the entire mission is coming in at an absurdly cheap (for NASA) $165.6 million. Stardust is part of the space agency's "fast and cheap" Discovery series (Mars Pathfinder with its robot rover was another). Like Pathfinder (and unlike the instrument-packed billion-dollar probes of the 1970s and '80s), Stardust is as stripped down as it can be. The 848-lb. spacecraft carries just solar panels, a camera, a radio, a spectrometer to analyze sunlight bouncing off the comet, a few sensors and the all-important sample-collecting system...