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.

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.