| Androids and "Organic Robots" Robots today are basically mechanical arms guided by computers that can weld, assemble parts, spray paint and do other simple repetitive factory tasks. There are also robotic lawn mowers and floor cleaners. Robots that move around on wheels and follow pre-programmed routes or are guided by radio waves, have rudimentary vision for collision avoidance and some recorded speech capacity also exist. In the future robot vision will become more complex and so will robot locomotion. We will see androids that can climb stairs and function independently. These machines might have skeletons made of metal, carbon nanotube based materials and high strength plastics. Artificial muscles made of carbon nanotube materials will be attached to the skeletons. They will have self healing skins with nano-sensors embedded in them and imprinted conductors sending sensory signals to their electronic brains. The skins will be like huge flexible computer chips. Their electronic brains will store quadrillions of gigabits of data in the molecular structure of their memory modules. They will follow installed programs and they will learn from experience like living creatures. |
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| The robots that explore and work on the Moon, Mars, in free space, etc. will be like living creatures unhindered by rigid mechanical or hydraulic limbs by the use of carbon nanotube ribbon artifical muscles. AI computers assisted by human teleoperators will make these robots capable of almost anything a human can do in space. Their motions will be fluid and their grippers will be capable of fine work. Within 50 years, when helium 3 mining starts, such "organic robots" should be possible to build. Dave Dietzler, 2007 |