New Robot Can Sense Damage, Compensate

AVIDJockey writes "Researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., built a four-legged robot that can sense damage to its body and figure out how to adjust and keep going. They report the development in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The article states that the robot can, 'generate a conception of itself and then adapt to damage.' This reaffirms advice that states that when the robot uprising finally comes, you should always aim your rocket launcher at the head (or brain nexus)."

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome any Robot Uprising!

call me when it can find sarah connor

[macadamia_harold]

Researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., built a four-legged robot that can sense damage to its body and figure out how to adjust and keep going.

Yeah, but was the robot made of intelligent, liquid metal?

Good Month for robots

[stoneycoder]

We've got human eating robots that love the bacony taste of their prey, robots with freakin machine guns attached to their heads, and now this. I for one... , blah blah.

Im to lazy to post the robotic links, its not like you dont know what im talking about if you're in this discussion at 3am rushing to check if someone already posted the "i for one" on the robot article. Really though, its cool to see robotics doing some crazy things.

In other news...

[tttonyyy]

Small Boy Pulls Four Legs off Robot. Robot says, "It's only a fleshwound, I've had worse!" and rolls about a bit.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no, no... you don't understand, you should had written: "I, for one, welcome our new pain-feeling robot overlords."

Compensate

[Bastard of Subhumani]

When I saw the word "compensate", my first thought was that it could automatically decide who to sue for damaging it. This could be based on a fuzzy logic system for calculating angles & velocities of potentially colliding objects and/or a pocket depth sensor.

In which case, I for one welcome our new robot lawyer overlords. YMMV. VWP. Other conditions may apply.

Re:In other news...

[gbobeck]

I can only imagine the error.log entries for that robot...

12:01:38 ERROR: Front Right Leg Not Found ('Tis but a scratch)
12:03:14 ERROR: Rear Left Leg Not Found ('Tis but a scratch)
12:04:49 ERROR: Front Left Leg Not Found ('Tis but a scratch)
12:07:26 ERROR: Rear Right Leg Not Found ('Tis but a scratch)

The head!?

[Sippan]

I have never killed a robot by aiming at the brain. That's zombies, you ignorant clod.

Robots are defeated by aiming at the bright, red (sometimes yellow) light that is hidden by thick armor which is unpenetrable by any weapon in the world, but which opens for long amounts of time every once in a while so you can fire at it.

Just one frontier left.

[Rob T Firefly]

I'm still waiting for robots that can criticise b-movies. [mst3k.com]

Re:The head!?

[Artifakt]

Mine are going to have eyes that turn blue when the Evil bit is on, and red when its off. They will also turn off their audio sensors and shoot first automatically when either William Shatner or Patrick McGoohan enters the area.

Re:The head!?

[tttonyyy]

A true robot overlord wouldn't use a configurable design like that. It'd be hardwired to "evil" when it was built, to reduce the possibility of someone trying to hack it to run OpenWRT or other unauthorised software.
No-one's going to brick my bots without a fight, dammit!