GENOMICON

Scarier than a ghost in a machine is a machine without a ghost.

I don’t know what it is about artificial humanity that’s so creepy… it is though.

Anyway – this is one more thing down the Segway track [1][2]… There’s a couple of vids of them here at www.marathonrobotics.com from whence they spring. Reminds me of The Avengers off the telly for some reason.

So obviously I’m interested in this partly because it’s made out of Lego and has machine guns that fire metal balls etc:

I mean who wouldn’t be?

The main reason I’m interested though is that it’s has First-Personalisation Capabilities… ie: you can see through its eyes.

This is something that Cati Vaucelle did as a research project at MIT Media Laboratory / Tangible Media Group.

An idea that has huge potential I think… I can see us getting to a stage where our robotics become good enough that a lot of people spend more time embodying a robot than being in their own skin, so to speak. Imagine a surgeon’s rig… instead of being next to a patient she operates through a machine – with 6 arms and microscope eyes.

She can perform keyhole surgery where she sees from the POV of a micro bot (also with 6 arms and microscope eyes) right inside someone’s body.

Meantime, she’s sitting in her living room, 12,000 miles away and later that day she’ll perform 3 more operations, all on different continents.

This could go in a million different directions. It’s one of the most exciting technologies that hasn’t quite happened yet that there is I think. Want to be a bird? Want to be a plane? Want to go on a safari hunting spiders 10 times bigger than you?

Meantime… it’s toys and weapons though. Until robotics technology catches up.