October » 2007 » The Electronic Replicant

BOOTS

These boots are made for walking, and that’s just what they’ll do// one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.

Nancy Sinatra

October’s almost over, and with it, this round of Robot-a-Day. I think these latest three really sum up the different views that people hold as to the future of robotics. What will be the ultimate role of our creations? Blindly obedient applicances? Your Plastic Pal Who’s Fun To Be With™? Frankenstein’s Monsters? Might there even be a role that’s been overlooked?

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IOU 5 ROBOTS

Things have been a little crazy this last week. Toorcon was fun. (Hackerspaces!) What wasn’t so fun was the Witch fire, and although I wasn’t evacuated, it was looking pretty iffy there for a while. Fortunately, everything seems to be under control for now, and maybe this weekend I’ll just put on my bunny slippers, make a cup of cocoa, and read a book.

Anyway, as the title says, IOU five robots for Robot-a-Day, and here they are.

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Gort Factory

If we can digitize a human with a milling machine, it seems to me that we ought to be able to fabricate robots in a single pass. I doubt they’d be the clanking tin monsters of last century. Instead, they’d be rubbery humanoids, hydraulically or pneumatically powered. At first, they’d probably have electronic brains and hydraulic pumps built in the usual fashion, but perhaps with the invention of extremely high-resolution fabricators, even those could be printed or extruded along with the rest of the unit. Eventually, they might literally walk off the assembly line.

NO assembly required.

Wireless Christmas Lights

Gentle Reader writes:

Q: Are there christmas lights that clip individually and are self- contained? no wires!

A: There can be, if you don’t mind a little bit of gluing or taping. You can make a variation of throwies that have clips instead of magnets. You will need:

Light-Emitting Diodes. Any color you like. If you’re not picky, youcan get an LEDassortment. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can get the self-blinkingvariety.
Watch Batteries: The original article suggests the CR2032battery, although I suspect that any three volt watch battery willwork just as well, but it may not last as long.
Tape: Any strong, non-conductive tape. It will hold the LED to thebattery, and the battery to the clip.
Clips: Since trees generally aren’t magnetic, you’ll need some way tohold your throwie to the tree. You can use clothespins, binder clips,Twist-Em’s, ornament hooks, or whatever else you may like.

Now, the only tricky part is to attach the long lead of the LED to the positive (+) side of the battery. Use the tape to secure the LED to the battery, and then to the fastening device thusly. (Click to enlarge.)

My examples are a little crude-looking, but they are only meant to demonstrate the principle. One could get quite crafty and employ ribbons, styrofoam, glitter, pipe cleaners, pine cones, spraypaint and anything else that may spring to mind.

The advantages of these over traditional lights are of course that there are no wires to tangle (although winding your traditional string of lights around a piece of cardboard at the end of the season can help with that.) They are also very low-current and should put off very little heat, much less than the typical incandescent bulb. Thus is is very unlikely that they will melt anything.

go, robo!

"We must run as fast as we can just to stay where we are. If we want to go somewhere, we must run at least twice as fast as that."

Cap'n Sharpie

The software pirates were bad enough, but the fleets of bots that came after them were worse, much worse.

Siren

"Space is dangerous, powerful dangerous. A fella’s sure to lose a hand, a leg, even a head. The ol’ Doc does what he can for us, but sometimes– heck, most of the time– it ain’t pretty."

What do you want?

Like most of you who have your own websites, I occasionally look at what brought people to the site. Sometimes, if I see that an interesting query is posed often enough, I’ll occasionally answer it. Other times, well, you know where aneurysms come from, right?

compound chocolate

Well, maybe I did mention compound chocolate once.This is the resulting substance when one substitutes vegetable oil (orother fat) for cocoa butter when making chocolate. There were plans toextend the official definition of the word "chocolate" to encompass compoundchocolate, but I don’t know whether that’s been resolved yet.

basic stamp hard disk

Either someone is trying to connect a hard drive to a BASIC stamp, orsomeone is planning to build a hard drive around a BASIC stamp. Theformer is, in my opinion, probably not worth it, unless you’re usingthe Stamp as some sort of data collection device, but even then, itwouldn’t be hard to just establish a serial link with a real computer,which could write the data to disk with ease. The latter, on the otherhand, would be a fantastic science fair project. And, it wouldn’tnecessarily have to be a disk. A cylinder might be easier tobuild:

electronic brain pancake

Are we about to witness the birth of the next Internet meme, or is"electronic brain pancake crystal elderly" just a random collection ofwords, like "fish brain robot?" Perhaps today’s Robot-a-Day will shedsome light on the matter. Main screen turn on!

Elder Crystal not included.

silicone gynoid replicant

Asking how to build a generic feminine robot is one thing. Askinghow to build a replica of a specific female is something else. Andasking specifically for silicone, with al of its connotations, isjust a little over-the-top. However, I suppose it does depend onthe intent behind the replicaition. I’d suppose that replicating, oh,Angelina Jolie for the purposes of, say, a Tomb Raider-themedamusement park ride would be okay, unless it was done without herpermission. On the other hand, replicating Angelina Jolie as alove-bot would be a little creepy, unless it was done with herpermission. (It would still be a bit creepy, though.) Now, what if itwasn’t a celebrity that was replicated, but an ordinary person whohappened to attract a stalker? Quite a bit more creepy. Now, whatif it wasn’t a stalkee that was replicated, but a beloved,deceased spouse? A little less creepy. How about a spouse that wasslightly less beloved, and slightly less dead? Hmm…