Browsing around the world wide web during my luck hour and I ran into a very interesting article over at IGN that I’d like to share with everyone. In the short lifespan of this blog I have already made quite a few robot related posts, it’s obvious that I have a great interest on the topic but I always say to my friends that my mind is rarely in touch with present happenings, I like to read about history and predictions for the future. Think about it, a decade or two ago who would have thought that we humans would be capable of many of the things we are doing today, stop think a little, then think of what we will be doing 10 to 20 years from now.
Excerpts from the article
Robotics
Looking ahead, we believe that two great avenues exist for dramatic technologic and societal change on the scale of the rise of the internet: robotics and nanotechnology. Both exist in relatively formative stages at the moment, yet dramatic progress is achieved on almost a monthly basis. Heavy manufacturing is already entirely dependent upon automated robotics and there are already more than 250 consumer products produced via nanotechnology. Looking back, both new genres of tech are already more developed than computers in the 1970s, which bodes well for exactly how far things will come.
The relatively new Kawada HPR-3 Promet Mark II is one of a new class of biped robots that actually begins to show promise as a potential human replacement. Waterproof, and able to perform manual tasks via human remote control, the robot could be a forerunner to the manual labor bots long prophesized in science fiction. While walking on two feet can give robots a comforting human style stance, four legs and more have great advantages in stability and load bearing. BostonDynamics’ BigDog quadruped is credited as being the most advanced robot of its type. On the other hand, the movement of the creation is oddly horrifying.
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is a term applied to a rather broad scope of science inquiry, in that the field is a culmination of a wide range of disciplines including applied physics, supermolecular chemistry, colloidal science, and mechanical and electrical engineering. All culminate in the applied ability to control matter on a scale between 1 and 100 nanometers, which means actual manipulation of individual molecules and atoms.
Future dreams for nanotechnology revolve around potential applications for carbon nanotubes, which are theoretically the strongest structures imaginable in the universe as we understand it, and farther out, self-assembling nanomachines that will be able to replicate themselves and build other structures, atom by atom. Though a degree of concern surrounds the theoretic possibility of run-away self assembly and deadly ‘grey-goo,’ the potential for atomic-level construction, when fully realized, may well catapult our species to near godlike capabilities in every scientific, medical, and engineering effort we pursue.
Future dreams for nanotechnology revolve around potential applications for carbon nanotubes, which are theoretically the strongest structures imaginable in the universe as we understand it, and farther out, self-assembling nanomachines that will be able to replicate themselves and build other structures, atom by atom. Though a degree of concern surrounds the theoretic possibility of run-away self assembly and deadly ‘grey-goo,’ the potential for atomic-level construction, when fully realized, may well catapult our species to near godlike capabilities in every scientific, medical, and engineering effort we pursue.
Read Full Article – Robotics and Nanotechnology