Tis was the last of my ‘Christmas’ break VSI books I took to my Mum’s house to get me through the day. Although it certainly covered all (or most) of the bases found it to be rather….. bland. Maybe it was the fact that the author spent too much time with what is being produced in labs today rather than looking forward? It is, obviously, and understandable viewpoint. Given as assessment of the present state of robotics research is a good start but I think he spent too much time there. The two other themes explored in this admittedly short book (only 132 pages) was humanoid robots and swarm bots and their applications both on Earth and in space exploration. Again, interesting as far as they went but (again) lacked a certain something from my point of view – thinking about it, maybe this introduction was just too much of an introduction and I actually needed something a bit more in-depth. This book was definitely not badly written nor was it boring, too technical or too simplistic. It just didn’t, for some reason I can’t quite put my finger on, float my boat.
A few things did intrigue me – a robot designed to generate power by ‘digesting’ slugs as an ideal self-running (and green!) garden assistant and the idea, which I’ve come across before, of the Uncanny Valley where humanoid robots become disturbingly human but not quite – sending shivers down peoples back whenever they encounter one. Obviously this could be a real problem in human-robot interaction when your mechanical partner literally gives you the creeps!
The book focused almost exclusively on civilian robots – in exploration, disaster recovery, medicine, construction, manufacturing and all those areas we are becoming familiar with – with hardly a mention of military applications (which I suppose have been done to death elsewhere) so I found it a little on-sided as things go. But my overall disappointment was, as you can probably tell, rather tenuous. A good start if you know little about robots but what you might have seen briefly in a handful of SF B-movies. But if you have a good idea of the technology I’d try something a bit more substantial.
2 comments:
What about the DESTROY ALL HUMANS robots? Were they mentioned at all?
I'm presently reading "Player Piano", a Vonnegut novel that concerns the social consequences of the economy becoming 'computerized' by mechanical gadgets that do virtually everything but administration and management. The technology is still very primitive, though -- his world-governing monsters still use punchcards and memory tape.
Didn't use the word 'Terminator' once! [sniff] Call itself a book on Robotics!
He did mention 'military robots' but that was about it - and a passing mention of UAV's.
Think I read Player Piano a LONG time ago. It's funny when old books project present technology into the future. I remember E E 'Doc' Smith's books in the 1930's using computers - who where people using slide rules - as calculators of 'jump points' on Interstellar transports. Quaint...
Post a Comment