Throwbot

This is pretty neat

Cool, at least partly because it’s the robot-gripper that’s an evacuated balloon, filled with coffee grounds – and not only can throw stuff, it’s also quite a good shot. Mind you, it isn’t very far away… but still, grand first try? Pretty good.

That’s what bothers me about sci-fi robots… they’re crap shots. Ballistics involves fairly simple mathematics… far simpler than the technology that it takes to build an autonomous robot for example.

We saw that “Eyeborg” last night – which I quite liked weirdly enough… it reminded me of early 80s low-budget movies. Not much money, but energy and ideas, and because of that, a funny kind of screen-presence. Like Robocop or Repoman etc.

Anyway, without giving too much away… the robots are seriously crap shots… even worse than Imperial Stormtroopers – and this would not happen. A gun platform advanced enough to be autonomous is going to be able to hit a penny at 1000 paces, every single time.

It’s a bit of a worry actually. I mean I can imagine arms-races with these things… but who’s the enemy? We’re not quite there yet… but in a globalised world, all wars are civil-wars.