As anyone who has seen Terminator, or Battlestar Galactica, or Bladerunner, or 2001, or Westworld, or WarGames, or Transformers knows, robots will kill us all. But we keep building them, because the spirit of human innovation cannot be extinguished, at least until we are all slaving in the Martian salt mines under the watchful eye of our Asimo overlords.
Actually, I'm usually more interested than scared when I hear about the latest robot developments, and I imagine that their creators must feel that the process of conceptualizing and constructing these machines is a kind of art form. Which is why I wanted to share these images of robots from universities and tech shows around the world. Their designs are often a subtle mix of functionality and form, some looking like bugs, dogs, people, and other familiar characters. To me, the casual, people-shaped ones are the most jarring - watching a robot do something mundane like make a cup of tea or pick up a straw seems to blur the lines between science and fiction.
Boston.com's The Big Picture (via Laughing Squid)
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