Here’s a real-world giant robot — used as advertising for Ericsson Telephones. I’m not sure where or when, but it’s quite old and makes for an impressive billboard, even if it’s not very mobile!
Source: me-ru-mo via Dark Roasted Blend
War of the Worlds: Goliath Trailer
Curious as to progress being made on the production of the animated War of the Worlds-inspired steampunk sequel War of the Worlds: Goliath (directed by Joe Pearson), I looked around and discovered the trailer. A lot of people have seen it already, but here it is anyway.
Beautiful artwork and animation. Hopefully the screenplay will be as good. It’s currently scheduled for a 2011 release.
War of the Worlds: Goliath last featured on Robot War Espresso here.
Robots of Deception
No doubt this is how we end up creating a race of Decepticons.
The evolution of robots toward the acquisition of fundamental human qualities has begun. Forget all that artificial intelligence stuff; the true test of humanity is the ability to lie.
A group of computer scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology are teaching their robots to be deliberately deceptive — at this stage by playing hide-and-seek. Isn’t that what Transformers do?
In the words of Professor Ronald Arkin, the researchers are developing algorithms that “allow a robot to determine whether it should deceive a human or other intelligent machine” and “help the robot select the best deceptive strategy to reduce its chance of being discovered.” There are obvious military advantages for a surveillance droid to have this ability, as deceptive robots on the battlefield would be able to successfully hide and mislead the enemy by sending out false tracking information in order to keep themselves and whatever information they’ve gathered safe.
But isn’t it dangerous?
“We have been concerned from the very beginning with the ethical implications related to the creation of robots capable of deception and we understand that there are beneficial and deleterious aspects,” Arkin said.
Co-researcher and engineer Alan Wagner added:
Most social robots will probably rarely use deception, but it’s still an important tool in the robot’s interactive arsenal because robots that recognize the need for deception have advantages in terms of outcome compared to robots that do not recognize the need for deception.
Social robots will “rarely” use deception, eh? That’s comforting.
Undead Backbrain questioned one of the experimental robots about the research. He said: “Why ask me? I’m not even a ro …. [click] … ro [click] … robot.”
Read more about the research on World Science.
Sources: DIVICE; World Science
AT-AT Day Afternoon and Iron Baby
This is a beautifully done piece of combined stop-motion animation/CGI and live action using an AT-AT toy. For those who don’t know, AT-AT refers to the “All Terrain Armored Transport” walker from Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.
And by the same creator/director, here’s IRON BABY:
Robot War Espresso 