Friday, October 07, 2005

Do Androids Dream of Electric Fish?




These are the coolest things I've seen since the creepy which one is the robot post. I read about it first on Slashdot. Robotic carp that aren't remote controlled and look very realistic in their movements. They're on display at the London Aquarium alongside real fish. Take a look at the BBC news story on them. But if you really want to see them swim, take a peek at their home site, Essex Robotics.

2 comments:

Miss Tanya said...

But why?

Commonplace said...

They state on their website that part of it is to study if fish movement could be used for human transport of some kind--to maximize what fish do best for man-made machines.

Beyond that, the way that they have programmed the robot to be aware of its surroundings and make movements based on those surroundings is one of the great leaps forward in modern robotics and sensors. That DARPA desert challenge is another example of this.

Overall, I just think it's very cool that they could create something that could seem so lifelike...

On the other hand, maybe your question is like that of Laslo in the great film Real Genius. Why would we want these lifelike robots if not for defense/war-making purposes? I can't answer that.