Here we will talk about some of the robots that have made the news in the last 5 years or so.
Asimo and the Boston Dynamics dancing robots and more…
Otheres in Hollywood like Star Wars with R2D2 and C3PO, and the show Lost in Space and the robot called B9.
There was one of the most recognizable old robots called Robby the Robot from the television show Forbidden Planet.
There were movies like Wall-E, Terminator, SimOne, AI, Gort from the Day the Earth Stood Still.
Robin Williams in the movie Millenial Man
Robots, Robocop, Short Circuit, Robot and Frank, Lost in Space, Space Camp, the character Johnny Cab in Total Recall, Red Planet, Batteries not Included, Logan’s Run, Minority Report, The Matrix, Spaceballs, Ex-Machina (which looks like the Sophia robot from Hanson Robotics), X-Men, Stepford Wives, Big Hero 6, Blade Runner and many more.
There has been discussion over the years of the lack of minority appearing robots or woman robots.
A few of the more famous female robots were these
–
–
There was a product called “secretary in a suitcase” which we will describe shortly.
A good documentary film about the Chess playing robot called “Game Over” with the computer Deep Blue playing Gary Kasperov.
Check out an amazing website showing photos of toy robots throughout history by Scot Bray on the site HackingMartian or http://www.HackingMartian.com. Also Scot Cragston with his amazing photo robot collection on http://www.horikawaRobots.com
The computer namede Watson played on Jeopardy once.
Minsky was very much involved in AI in the 70s and the UK government stopped funding AI research in the 1970s while Kurzweil came out with the term Singularity and raised the idea of a guaranteed income for people as robots take away all the jobs.
Hong Kong recently spent over $6 billion in AI research and something called Bluesky Research.
It was funny that WoWwee company after several years of success with their macho male Robosapien toy robot came out with a slender sexy toy female robot.
It was made without clothes partly because of importation and categorization rules which made it easier to ship if a toy robot did not have clothing.
(under construction August 27 2021)