A series of articles on an eating, pooping robot.

Jul 22, 2010 10:22

Energy Autonomy: Ecobot - aka, a robot that eats (?! bad idea ( Read more... )

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owlsie July 22 2010, 17:25:56 UTC
it...it wasn't enough to make them learn and think...they had to make them eat and poop as well?

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sailor_moonbeam July 22 2010, 17:30:27 UTC
ot: is your icon from the scene in "the never ending story" when artax dies in the swamp?

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changeling0203 July 22 2010, 19:23:27 UTC
It's from Never Ending Story, but I'm not sure what scene. It just seemed fitting for this post :-p .

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psion_dynamo July 22 2010, 17:44:11 UTC
they're not just doing this to build energy independent robots. They're trying to make biomimetic androids. I see where this is going...and I kind of like it.

Let's just hope they don't decide humans are the most efficient fuel source.
They should be designed to complement, not compete with us. We already have food shortages. Can we really go around feeding robots? They should run on methane or poop instead of creating them, too.

I wonder what applications this tech would have for cyborgs.

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changeling0203 July 22 2010, 19:25:31 UTC
Food shortage? Where? In the US we actually have a surplus of food, but, like diamonds, if it was all released in stores prices would go down so much that farmers couldn't make a profit. So there are food bins where the excess food rots. But imagine trying to send that food overseas to impoverished countries - due to bureaucracy, legal barriers, time constraints, etc., the food would probably rot before it got there.

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psion_dynamo July 22 2010, 19:39:30 UTC
Fair enough, but I still am not entirely comfortable with feeding that food to non-sentient beings instead.
And those issues are things that also should be addressed before all this transhumanist and futuristic business.
I'm for science as much as anyone, but our tech development has already outpaced our empathy, and this is just an example. You'd think a civilization this close to creation in its own image like that would have solved some of those problems you mentioned first, and the fact that we haven't says something ugly about humanity.

It's irrelevant to this post, though. But then, so are any other opinions we express here, as this thing is happening, regardless.

For the record, I thought this was really cool, and I reposted it to friends. It's just that I have some ethical problems with this.

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changeling0203 July 22 2010, 21:23:33 UTC
Me too. And I think Einstein said something similar to you about technology surpassing our empathy. IMO, the expansion of scientific knowledge shouldn't only be knowledge for the sake of it (maybe that's, like, 50%), but it should also be for the good of humankind. It's cool people have figured out how to do this, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, too, when I think about what it means about us.

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dharmavati July 22 2010, 18:12:27 UTC
LOL these sound like the hypothetical organisms from my Neuroscience exams... and that's awesome!

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layweed July 22 2010, 19:30:50 UTC
I can't wait until they realize this fails so bad and redesigns them so they run on alcohol instead. And then they could program them with surly attitudes and kickass names like "Bender Bending Rodriguez".

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changeling0203 July 22 2010, 21:24:37 UTC
Hopefully we won't have to wait for the 31st century.

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