Word: robots
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Consider, says Chalmers, the robot named Cog, being developed at M.I.T.'s artificial-intelligence lab with input from Dennett (see following story). Cog will someday have "skin"--a synthetic membrane sensitive to contact. Upon touching an object, the skin will send a data packet to the "brain." The brain may then instruct the robot to recoil from the object, depending on whether the object could damage the robot. When human beings recoil from things, they too are under the influence of data packets. If you touch something that's dangerously hot, the appropriate electrical impulses go from hand to brain...
...that time NASA will have plenty of other missions to manage. The next project in the Discovery series is the Mars Pathfinder, scheduled for launch next December, which will land on the Red Planet and send a robot rover off to explore. Then comes Lunar Prospector in 1997, designed to chart the mineral composition of Earth's nearest neighbor, and after that a mission to bring a chunk of comet back to Earth, slated for 1999. Each is supposed to cost a few hundred million dollars at most, and thanks to NEAR that goal, considered highly improbable when...
...very juicy, I said, but not compared with the Forbes campaign. Steve Forbes, doing that great comedy-club impression of what would happen if some mad scientist decided to construct a dork robot, turned out to be, when inserted into the Republican presidential campaign, a walking fragmentation bomb...
...every thug, there are a dozen Deadheads ripe for a religious experience. Hey, everyone has to believe in something. And in this woozy age--when the spiritual and the secular often blend, and born-again Christians are rivaled in fervor by devotees of Elvis, Mr. Spock and Crow T. Robot--it was no surprise to see signs announcing that JERRY...
Japan's latest success adds fuel to yet another debate about deep-sea exploration. Some scientists insist that remote-controlled, robotic craft are no substitute for having humans on the scene. Says MBARI's Robison: "Whether you're a geologist or a biologist, being able to see with your own eyes is vital. That's a squiffy-sounding rationalization, but it's true." There are other advantages too, he notes. "The human eyes are connected to the best portable computer there is [the brain]. And when things go wrong, a person can often fix them faster, more easily and more...