Archive | Robotics

Sherry Turkle is an MIT professor who studies human- robot psychological and social interactions.  She has been documenting and studying the attitudes of humans toward having emotional relationships and affective interactions with robots over time, and notes a gradual shift toward seeing such interactions favorably.  She recently presented at the annual American Association for the […]

VC readers, being eclectic polymaths, are likely to heard of the “Uncanny Valley” – the hypothesis advanced by roboticist Masahiro Mori that a “person’s response to a humanlike robot would abruptly shift from empathy to revulsion as it approached, but failed to attain, a lifelike appearance. This descent into eeriness is known as the uncanny valley.” Mori’s […]

In my earlier posts comparing self-driving cars and autonomous weapon systems, I pointed out that in neither case are we seeing a sudden, systemic paradigm change, a shift from one whole technological system to another.  Not, at least, in the sense that I had long assumed – that a change-over to driverless cars would require […]

I’m continuing my series of posts on automated vehicles (the last one was some initial thoughts on comparisons between self-driving cars and autonomous weapon systems).  Today I want to recommend this January 12, 2013 NYT story, by John Markoff and Somini Sengupta, on the current state of safety systems for cars in the incremental advance […]

(Thanks Instapundit for the link.)  Driverless cars are coming faster than most observers would have thought.  One big reason, according to Bryant Walker Smith in a recent article in Slate, is that people predicting the driverless car future assumed that they would have to be part of centrally-run systems, with corresponding changes to physical infrastructure, […]

Though much of my attention goes to military drones used outside the US, the regulatory issues surrounding US domestic drones are vital and difficult.  Domestic drones of many types, sizes, and functions will become an increasingly important part of US aviation over time, and the issues are thorny.  Lawyer types like me tend to focus […]

Wired (H/T Instapundit) has a nice article by Daniela Hernandez on the coming of “robo-doctors.” Not  yet quite what our sci-fi imaginations desire, but still an important development on its own terms: Charlie Huiner, the vice president of InTouch Health care … sees robo-docs rising … His company is developing robots that allow doctors to […]

The Wall Street Journal has an article in its Thursday, March 15, 2012 edition titled “The Robots Are Coming to Hospitals.”  Reporter Timothy Hay explores ways in which robots are being deployed to transport linens, laundry, and other things around hospital complexes – which are, of course, often enormous facilities.  (I believe this is an […]

Wired’s Chris Anderson points to a new report by the Hizook robotics portal on the relatively limited levels of venture capital funding for robotics.  I was surprised – I assumed there was more.  Information is hard to come by, Hizook says, but the post has a chart with annotations on various VC investments in robotics […]

China has been moving to catch up with the US and Israel in production of military UAV drones, reports the Wall Street Journal today, in an article by Jeremy Page (Friday, Nov. 19, 2010, A11). The article says that the uptick in drone output has surprised the West: Western defense officials and experts were surprised […]

The idea of robotic cars that drive themselves is a good one, I think, and one whose time is rapidly coming.  The New York Times reports on Google undertaking test drives of cars in the San Francisco area with robotically controlled cars, including a drive down Lombard Street, a famously hilly and difficult street.  The […]