Little robot history. Everybody check out the following link and attempt to ignore the music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pbbJTTzNBU
That's Honda's ASIMO P1, circa 1993. Kinda looks like it could give the T1000 a run for its money, doesn't it? Big, threatening, lumbering, 6'2, 386 lbs of pure robot menace. If you look here:
http://asimo.honda.com/asimo-history/
...you'll notice that right after the P1, Honda PR staged an intervention with Honda R&D.
Now watch this video:
That's last year's ASIMO. You don't immediately notice that compared to the P1, it moves like a goddamn ninja. You don't immediately notice that the problems that plagued ED-209 it has handled. And you don't notice these things because Honda PR wisely pointed out that if you're going to create an autonomous cybersoldier capable of running at 6km/h and avoiding obstacles, it had best be the size and shape of an 8-year-old boy.
The GRASP lab isn't even about "robotics" in the same way Honda's ASIMO project is. They're interested in swarm dynamics - an interesting field that started at Los Alamos National Labs back in the late '80s. A number of clever ducks noted that the basic instructions necessary to model the flight of a flock of crows, for example, are far, far fewer than the basic instructions necessary to model the flight of a crow. Same with fish - a few simple Boolean statements and you can get really complex behavior out of a large number of specimens that you can't get out of one.
But that's not exactly "sexy."
Go look up "BEAM Robotics" on Google and see how many hits you get. You can even check the Wikipedia page and see if it seems similar to what's going on here. Now go look up "Skynet" and see how many hits you get.
I guess what I'm saying is this:
They don't have to paint the things black. I'm sure they'd argue that they show up better against a white sheet, but whatever. They'd show up better for their research purposes with IR emitters in a dark room anyway.
They don't have to scream like angry wasps as they fly around. Vary the blade pitch, vary the blade spacing and you could make the things sound like goddamn hummingbirds if you wanted to. I'm sure they'd argue that they're using the most efficient lift profile in order to maximize efficiency, but whatever.
They're totally leveraging the Internet's fascination with "killer robots." And they're fucking fun to watch. But keep in mind that for the purposes of the research being done, the GRASP lab would rather have those things the size of honeybees... and that a single Predator UAV will kill you much, much deader than a million of those things.
(I'm sure it's just a glitch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrXfh4hENKs)
BEAM seems to make real sense. Yet, people are hardwired to respond to people, and to be wary of most everything else. Even if a maggot bot can walk your dog better than the Pinocchio bot, people are going to go for Pinocchio. Maybe we will get used to odd shaped bots performing tasks, but I think there is something deep in us that is wary of non-human creatures that can do things effectively. Still, R2D2 was very cute and lovable.
I think you are right about GRASP leveraging that response.
Your links led me here:
Sherry Turkle, a robo-ethicist at MIT, spends a number of chapters on the relationships between people and machines in her book "Alone Together." one of the interesting discussions is on the MIT's robot "COG":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-4vj_S46jY
You'll note that it isn't human. At all. Yet a number of students - graduate students at MIT pursuing higher education in artificial intelligence - got quite upset when they discovered that Cog spends a fair amount of time in a dark room turned against the wall. They consider it "inhumane."
There's a difference between a robot following a script and tricking us into feeling that it's "human" and a robot that's synthesizing responses. You'll note that Cog and his compatriot Kismet aren't so much following a script as they're heuristically pulling shit out of their ass:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KRZX5KL4fA
Yet Kismet and Cog feel more "human" because they aren't aping.
Something that Sherry Turkle holds as her synthesis over three books: machines aren't human, machines will never be human, but the parts of humanity they lack we are eager and willing to fill in around them. Perhaps because Kismet and Cog are further down in the Uncanny Valley than the creepy gynoids that the Japanese seem to favor, we find them less repulsive... while at the same time finding them more alien.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-airborne-robot-swarms-co...
That is so very cool and so freaky at the same time. The formation immediately brought space invaders to mind. I cringe at the military uses for this.
But I imagine a new mail delivery, where an automated truck drives down your street, and swarms of drones fly back and forth from the truck, dropping the mail at people houses. I'm sure they will be used in search an rescue.
Copter capable of lifting a 2kg payload (that's a half-gallon of milk): http://extremeaerials.com/buy-a-octocopter/
I took thought of Space Invaders right away. Reminds me of one of my favorite music videos, Röyksopp, Happy up here: