Robot Family | Physical Computing


Today I will be the happy owner of the Nabaztag rabitt. It will be a happy family gathering since nabaztag actualy is a useful little robot..


Sputnik and Igor is my first robots. They are both the BEAM type. Beam is a acronym for Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics, and Mechanics. I am also fan of the variant :Building, Evolution, Anarchy, Modularity, beam builders are very unorthodox in their use of components. The essence of beam are that they mostly don´t use microcontrollers, and therefore no programing is needed. Instead they are simplistic interpretations of biological life. By the inventor Mark Tilden described like this:
A robot must protect its existence at all costs.
A robot must obtain and maintain access to a power sources.
A robot must continually search for better power sources.

This is partly in direct conflict with the more famous laws of robots made by Asimow, they go like this:
robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given to it by the human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the Zeroth or First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict the Zeroth, First, or Second Law..
Beam research was ground research in robotics, it halted when most ideas was discovered and the limits of the design was reached. the dream of exploring mars with a myriad of cheap robot working in flock instead of one expensive and vulnerable robot is not any closer. The progress in Nano technology may change this, and is also the reason many scientist these days may have trouble falling to sleep. Their worry is the famous Grey Goo , and It also made these people propose a solution :D
Kravle and Brutuss. Two species from the same DNA.. Their creator Mark Tilden wanted to conquer Mars with small crawling flock of BEAM robots, now he has conquered the toy stores instead.
Head and Rulle, two Microcontroller robots run on BASIC.... more to come..
IDogg and Harepus.... more to come...
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Posted: Fre. - Februar 24, 2006 at 07:06 PM          

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